


for the life of me

by stillscape



Series: for the life of me [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon compliant for now, F/M, Gen, Pre-Series, Prequel, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-08 13:44:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11082798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: Freshman year at Riverdale High. A Betty and Jughead (but not yet Bughead)-centric prequel. Rating is for the occasional swear only; all other content is consistent with the show's canon.Canon compliant through (currently) chapter 5, and will remain so. There is a canon divergent version that picks up from the end of chapter 5 and proceedshere, in the third story in this series. The burn is slow, guys.* * * * *Betty Cooper is her sister’s sister, which is to say, she’s been hearing stories about Cheryl Blossom all her life. From these she can surmise that the humiliation of her River Vixens tryout will be trending on Twitter within minutes, if it’s not already.#SeasonFiveBettyDraper.It isnotthe ideal end to her first day of high school.* * * * *Jughead Jones is alone in the library of Riverdale High. He has been for some time; not even the librarian has stuck around. Nobody goes to the library after the first day of school. Jughead is, at the moment, categorizing himself as “nobody.”





	1. Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [for the life of me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14368164) by [Elrie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elrie/pseuds/Elrie)



> Many thanks to diaphenia, who is a beautiful glitter crab. 
> 
> Comments are always appreciated.

Betty Cooper is her sister’s sister, which is to say, she’s been hearing stories about Cheryl Blossom all her life. From these she can surmise that the humiliation of her River Vixens tryout will be trending on Twitter within minutes, if it’s not already. _#SeasonFiveBettyDraper_. 

It is _not_ the ideal end to her first day of high school. 

Tears sting the corners of Betty’s eyes as she marches from the gym to the girls’ locker room, chin stuck out as far as she can manage, and _sting_ is exactly the right word, because these are tears of injustice and self-righteous anger, and in this case anger hurts worse than humiliation. She is fourteen years old and it’s impossible not to have internalized some pretty paradoxical bullshit. She knows that when she pulls on the black short-shorts and close-fitting top and looks in the mirror she’s supposed to frown and say _ugh, my thighs_. And she does—she did—because these are the social niceties to be observed and Betty is nothing if not observant of social niceties. 

But she looks in the mirror again before she changes back into her own clothes, and she can’t shake the nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach that, while most of the current Vixens might be smaller, she is actually not fat at all; that while there are many things wrong with the girl staring back, her thighs are not one of them. Or at least they’re way, way down on the list. 

Her mother will undoubtedly have seen the hashtag. Her mother, she knows, not-so-secretly follows the Blossom twins’ social media output with a close, critical eye. Her mother will undoubtedly have _disappeared_ all the ice cream and potato chips before Betty gets home, not that the Coopers ever really keep much in the way of junk food in the house anyway. 

Alone in the locker room, Betty smooths her hands over her new first-day-of-high-school blouse, straightening an invisible wrinkle, and nods firmly at nothing in particular. 

(Nodding, she has recently discovered, can keep that odd black feeling from encroaching, as though shaking her brain redistributes it, keeps it from settling. She, Betty Cooper, is a snow globe.) 

If she can’t put “cheerleader” on her college applications, she’s going to have to find something else to fill in the gap.

* * * * * 

Jughead Jones is alone in the library of Riverdale High. He has been for some time; not even the librarian has stuck around. Nobody goes to the library after the first day of school. Jughead is, at the moment, categorizing himself as “nobody.”

He pulls out his cell phone to check the time, as though the phone is somehow going to tell him a different one than the clock on the wall opposite him, or the clock on his computer. It does not. He still has almost a full hour before Archie will be done with freshman football tryouts, and three hours before he’s due at the Twilight.

(The words _“Why don’t you try out for football too, Jug?”_ may have been uttered once, a week ago when Archie’s intentions were formally announced. But even Archie seemed to realize the complete and utter incompatibility of Jughead Jones and organized sports, to the point that he didn’t even need Jughead’s best _are you fucking kidding me_ eyebrow to fall silent and never bring up the subject again.) 

The laptop’s screen goes black. He hastily taps the touchpad to turn it back on and skims through the last few paragraphs of his latest short story. It’s about a teenage boy whose family is slowly falling apart at the seams, a disintegration fueled by alcohol and unemployment, and it is absolutely not in any way autobiographical. 

He’s almost sunken back into his stream of consciousness when the library door creaks open and Betty Cooper enters, muttering into a phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder. 

For half a moment, Jughead considers waving to her, or at least nodding in acknowledgement, before he remembers he dragged an armchair into a shadowy corner behind a bookshelf precisely so he wouldn’t be obviously visible to anyone entering the library. His attempt at concealment has clearly worked, because Betty’s quick 360-degree scan appears to reveal nothing to her, and she collapses into a chair in front of the library computers, three-quarters profile to him, visible through the library-standard open shelving. 

“Well, it might _be_ a good line, but god, Kevin. I need a little more ‘I can’t believe Cheryl would say that to you’ and a little less appreciation of—”

Jughead can’t hear Kevin’s response, obviously, but whatever it is causes Betty to laugh. 

“Yes. Thank you. I can’t believe Cheryl would say that to me either! Or that she would tweet it.” 

Jughead is not eavesdropping on Betty Cooper, who now sighs. Jughead does not half-consciously note the way she’s deliberately exaggerated the sigh so that Kevin can hear it through the phone, or the way that it makes the end of her ponytail sway.

“I mean, _is_ it stupid to have thought that? Like, I know it’s the worst cliché in the world. I _know_ that. Especially the part where we grew up literally looking into each others’ bedroom windows.” 

Jughead is not eavesdropping on Betty Cooper. Jughead is now reaching slowly, quietly, for the headphones he’s pretty sure are coiled in the pocket of his jacket. Jughead is not trying to interpret what Betty’s body language means, why she’s now shifting in her chair, why she’s repeatedly pulling her blouse away from her body and sucking in her stomach as the fabric falls back into place. Jughead is not picking up on a slight catch in her voice when she speaks again, nor getting an uncomfortable heat in the pit of his stomach that he knows to be attached to guilt over having overheard this conversation. 

“Do _you_ think I need to?” 

Jughead is not eavesdropping on Betty Cooper, so he slips in the earbuds, plugs his headphones in, and hits play on iTunes. Jughead is turning the volume up, drowning out Betty Cooper with a shockingly good playlist specially curated by his nine-year-old sister. It starts with “Baba O’Riley,” and he leans into Pete Townshend’s electric organ, anticipating that blissful moment when the drums kick in. 

Jughead is not proud of the fact that, for whatever reason, he knows Cheryl Blossom’s Twitter handle. But logically, any chronicler of high school life is bound by duty not to completely detach himself from gossip, if he wants his chronicle to be accurate. Gossip is the lifeblood of high school; he knows this instinctively from having spent one day in it (and also from approximately every high school movie ever made), so it is with appropriately distanced and disinterested curiosity that he pulls up a browser window to check Cheryl’s feed. 

He’s met with a slightly blurry screencap of January Jones in a hideous sixties floral print, apparently shoveling two sundaes into her mouth, and the words _For the record, ladies, this isn’t the #VixensAesthetic #wrongbetty_.

____

__

__So this is how high school is going to go. Cheryl’s good, he’ll give her that; she’s left enough plausible deniability to claim “#wrongbetty” refers to the image on his screen and not the Betty in front of him. Still, he feels vaguely nauseous at the whole thing for reasons he can’t quite articulate to himself, aside from a few objective facts. Such as the one that the Betty in front of him is enough of a friend for him to feel the insult more strongly on her behalf than he might for, oh, any other girl at Riverdale High. And the other one that the insult is nonsensical, because there is nothing particularly wrong with the Betty in front of him._ _

__Puberty, to Jughead, has thus far felt more like an intellectual exercise than any sort of uncontrollable biological process. He has stayed clear-headed about girls so far, and that—considering the madness that seems to have descended upon his peers in the last year—is a blessing. And that’s why he can disinterestedly confirm that there is nothing particularly wrong with Betty Cooper, having seen her in a bathing suit several times this summer on Fred Andrews-sponsored excursions to the one lake that sort of has a swimming beach._ _

__The point is, he’s seen this movie before. Betty doesn’t wear glasses, but in six or nine or twelve or eighteen months she’ll take down her ponytail and put on a miniskirt, and everyone will go _oh my god is that Betty Cooper who ever would have thought_. At this point Jughead will receive the grim satisfaction of having been right all along. He will consider removing his beanie to be the best man at the Cooper/Andrews nuptials. This is the best-case scenario. (The worst-case scenario is that Archie has some long-lost cousin or something who gets asked to be best man, and the second-worst-case-scenario involves a lot of bees.) _ _

__(The point is, Betty Cooper is not horrible to look at.)_ _

__Betty hangs up her phone and logs into the computer in front of her. Soon she’s pages deep into what from his vantage point looks like the school website, and Jughead returns to his short story, quickly losing himself in a lengthy description of what it feels like to walk through mud with a heavy backpack on your shoulders and the sensation that a heavily tattooed man in a leather jacket is about to jump out of a bush in front of you (again, not autobiographical). He’s in enough of a zone that he legitimately jumps when a hand taps him on the shoulder._ _

__It’s not Archie. It’s Betty, two sheets of 8.5” x 11” paper in her hand and one half-exasperated expression on her face. He scrambles to pull the earbuds out._ _

__“Jughead, how long have you been here?”_ _

__“What?”_ _

__“I just saw you when I got up to get this out of the printer—” she waves the papers, an itemized list of each and every extracurricular activity offered by Riverdale High— “and it scared the crap out of me. How long have you been sitting here?”_ _

__He’s about to shove his laptop into his bag, stand up as sociability requires, but Betty sits in the chair nearest him, apparently having just convinced herself that he had no idea he wasn’t alone in the library._ _

__“Since the bell rang.”_ _

__“You’re waiting for Archie?”_ _

__It’s a question that doesn’t need to be one. They don’t exactly know each other through Archie, seeing as Riverdale is a small enough town that they’ve been classmates more or less their entire lives, but they see each other, relate to each other, through him. They enjoy each other’s company well enough but don’t seek it out. They have each other’s numbers in their phones, but only because Archie is continually misplacing his own and has had to text Betty from Jughead’s phone and vice versa._ _

__Jughead nods._ _

__“How’d your first day go?”_ _

__He shrugs. “Very much as I expected. It’s exactly like junior high, except we’re back to being the smallest fish in the pond.”_ _

__“And the biggest fish are meaner.”_ _

__“I believe they’ve been upgraded from barracudas to sharks.”_ _

__Betty groans. “Tell me about it.”_ _

__There follows a long, awkward silence that Jughead is pretty sure means Betty is trying to figure out whether, or what, he knows about her River Vixens tryout. Mercifully, it’s interrupted by their mutual best friend, who enters the library wearing a Bulldogs sweatshirt and the unmistakable pride of someone who’s just realized he’s going to be able to look back in twenty years and legitimately say that his high school years were _great_. _ _

__“Oh, hey, you’re both here. Jug, you ready?”_ _

__Jughead nods, pulls his power cord from the wall and carefully wraps it so it won’t tangle in his bag. He glances from Betty’s face to Archie’s and sees the same unspoken question in hers: does Archie know about her River Vixens tryout? He’s always enjoyed watching Betty try to figure out puzzles; while he can’t read every expression on her face, there are inevitably so _many_ of them. Today, though, the furrow of her brow strikes him as sad rather than amusing, and he looks away. _ _

__“Jug and I are going to Pop’s for milkshakes,” Archie says. “Wanna join us?”_ _

__And even though Betty has answered “yes” to this question a hundred times before, today she shakes her head and mumbles something about needing to get home._ _

____

* * * * * 

“The sun will come out tomorrow,” Polly tells her after dinner.

“You’re hardly one to talk. You weren’t there.” These words are muffled, because Betty has hidden her head under a pillow.

“No, but I know how high school works. Betty, _no one_ gets through all four years without something like this happening.” 

In response, Betty lets out a long, low groan. 

“It’s fine,” says Polly. “It’ll be fine.” 

“No one ever called _you_ fat on Twitter.” 

She feels a pat on her knee—supposed to be comforting, she supposes. “The football team thinks I’m easy,” Polly says, in an oddly cheerful voice for someone delivering that kind of statement. 

Betty sits up abruptly, sweeping the pillow aside. “Wait, what?” 

Polly shrugs, smiling sweetly. “They’re just rumors. _I_ know I’m not. The secret, Betts, is that you can’t care what people think of you. Not even Mom! Look, the best thing you can do is just laugh it all off. Cheryl’s really not even that bad once you get to know her.” 

Betty Cooper loves her sister, but this strikes her as truly terrible advice. She falls asleep that night alternating between thoughts of going to school with a paper bag over her head and going to school with a flamethrower and torching Cheryl Blossom to the ground.

But Polly, shockingly, is right. 

Tuesday dawns bright and sunny, and Archie, finally caught up to speed, spends the entire walk to school fuming on her behalf. Once there, she hears a few snickers from Ginger Lopez and the like. But no one says much of anything to her face, or (to her knowledge or Kevin’s) behind her back. Wednesday dawns bright and sunny, and she goes to the office between classes and signs up to be a tour guide and a volunteer tutor. Thursday dawns bright and sunny, and she cheers Archie on at his first after-school football practice. 

Friday, it rains. But it’s sunny again by Monday and life continues on. 

By the time October rolls around and the maple leaves have turned from green to Archie’s hair to Cheryl’s lipstick, the whole thing is actually kind of funny (almost but not really). She breaks out a new blue sweater for the first freshman football game and likes the way it falls over her chest, and the only reason she doesn’t finish her nachos is that she leaves them on her seat when she goes to the bathroom, forgetting who’s sitting next to her. 

Jughead offers to get more, but by then Archie’s about to go in for his first snaps of the game, and she’s too nervous to eat anything anyway.

“Jug and I are going to Pop’s for milkshakes,” Archie says after it’s all over and he’s emerged from the locker room, scrubbed clean and fresh. “Wanna join us?” 

Betty nods yes. 

It’s not the nodding that resets her snow globe, she’s starting to realize. It’s the _yes_.

* * * * * 

He almost misses his own birthday party—not that it can in any way be described as a party—because they’re packing again, moving for the third time in two years, into an even smaller and cheaper house that’s even farther south, just a hair’s breadth above the line that separates Riverdale’s halves. The rental may or may not have been secured for them by large tattooed men in leather jackets; Jughead really doesn’t want to know.

“Denial is a river in Egypt,” he tells himself. The Twilight has shut down for the winter and he thinks he’ll have just enough spending money to be comfortable until it reopens in spring, assuming he doesn’t wind up having to help out with groceries or power bills. 

Archie sticks a lone candle in a cheeseburger, as per their tradition, and he blows it out and wishes what he wishes every year. It doesn’t come true (not that he expected it to), but Archie rides his bike over the next morning to help them finish packing. 

“Where’s your dad?” Archie wonders, as he swoops in to relieve Jellybean from dragging a box that’s bigger than she is. 

Luckily, Jughead has made advanced preparation for this plot point. “He went over to fix up some stuff at the new place.” 

Archie, who is after all a fundamentally accepting person, accepts this. 

He’s only been shoved in a locker twice, and only once that any sort of authority figure noticed, so on that level high school’s a step up from last year. 

They read _Catcher in the Rye_ in English class and it almost kills him in a way he has trouble articulating at first, even to himself. Archie can’t quite grasp what Holden Caulfield has to be depressed about, Valerie rolls her eyes and quite reasonably announces that a better work ethic would solve pretty much all of his problems, Betty for once stays completely silent, and Jughead, Jughead can’t say anything in class but works it out on paper later. He both loves and hates Holden Caulfield in the way he imagines Salinger intended him to, and rolls his eyes at the aimlessness, the lack of appreciation for the silver spoons that are pretty clearly falling out of Holden’s mouth. He hates that he simply cannot separate himself from the cliché of being a fifteen-year-old would-be writer with a literary hard-on for Salinger, frankly. 

But Phoebe. Phoebe is the thing that kills him, possibly also in the way Salinger intended him to be killed, because he’s Holden and Jellybean is Phoebe (with better taste in music), except the carousel is broken, it’s never not raining, and the rye is waist-high weeds strewn through with snakes. 

The subsequent essay earns him an A, the first one he’s gotten all year. It also nabs him an English-teacher-scheduled appointment with the school guidance counselor to discuss his “potential,” a word he finds simultaneously meaningless and horribly, horribly loaded, especially when the word is followed by “that you’re not living up to.” 

“My family moved a couple weeks ago,” he tells the guidance counselor, making sure he looks her straight in the eye. “I’ve just been a little unsettled. It’s fine.” Riverdale High being Riverdale High, this works. 

His takeaway from all this is that Valerie is probably the most sensible person in the room. 

He watches a TED talk in which the speaker cites that oft-repeated adage that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to be good at anything. Jughead does the math and discovers that at his current rate, he will be a good writer in 9.132420009 years, which, _great_. 

Two weeks later he happens upon Betty Cooper at a picnic table, bundled from head to toe except for her hands, which are raw and red and hold a copy of _Beloved_. She looks up at him—it’s hard to walk silently through dry, dead leaves—and he sees tears streaming down her face. 

“Uh,” he starts, feeling that it would be unconscionably rude not to say _something_. 

“I’m fine,” Betty says with a sniffle, wiping her eyes with a coat sleeve. Her other hand holds the book higher. “It’s just...this.” 

“Yeah,” he mutters. 

“It’s...it’s crazy that something so sad can be so beautiful. I don’t even know whether I’m crying over the sad part or the beautiful part.” Betty shakes her head, sitting up a little straighter. “Well. You get it.” 

Jughead nods. 

He does.

* * * * * 

It starts with Moose, then spreads to Reggie Mantle and even Kevin; Chuck Clayton kind of arrived in Riverdale that way, and in mid-November Betty has the sudden realization that more than half the guys in her grade don’t look like kids anymore. Most of the girls don’t either, but then (as her mother has said a million times) girls mature more quickly.

Betty resolutely checks her own appearance carefully every morning and evening, waiting for the day she’ll see that difference in herself. 

“I think your face is a little thinner,” Polly says, but Polly is different too, now—applying dark lipstick once they’re at school, wearing her hair down more often, leaving the house almost every night their parents both work late. The freshmen don’t eat lunch at the same time as the juniors, but Betty knows her sister sits at the Blossoms’ table now. 

One night when Betty’s home alone, she steals into Polly’s room, experimenting on herself with blush and eyeshadow and YouTube tutorials until her eyes are raccoon-like and her cheekbones are...well. Exactly the same, but pinker. She rolls her eyes at her reflection and grabs a washcloth to scrub it all off again. 

( _Cosmopolitan _later informs Betty that her skin tone is just enough different from her sister’s that she ought to try a slightly brighter shade. For once it turns out to be right. The switch from Plumberry Glow to Classic Pink makes all the difference in the world, somehow, along with a little mascara.)__

__(Without makeup, Betty’s face looks exactly the same to her.)_ _

__Archie forgets to close his bedroom curtains more often than not. She’s not spying on him (she’s _not_ ), but she is keeping an eye out. For what, she’s not exactly sure. _ _

__The first weekend after football season ends, Jughead sleeps over, and as she half-watches the two of them unfurling the Andrews’ old air mattress, it strikes her that Archie’s suddenly much taller than his friend. This, she finds disconcerting; as of last week, she and Jughead were exactly the same height._ _

Her parents are both working late and Polly’s out with friends, so Betty impulsively waves to the two boys from her bedroom window and sends a text to both of them: _I’m thinking of making cookies, come over if you want_ and then waits with semi-bated breath for a response. Jughead checks his screen right away; Archie pats down his pockets and then begins looking wildly around the room. 

_What kind?_

__

__

_I hadn't decided._

_Do you take requests?_

_Not from you, Jughead._ This sounds meaner than she intended, so she quickly follows up with _I know you’re going to say “all of them.”_

_Peanut butter chocolate chip, then._

__When she looks up, Jughead’s grinning inscrutably through the bedroom windows, if a grin can be described as inscrutable. She gestures “come on over” and double-checks that she has not, in fact, taken off her bra before heading downstairs._ _

__The boys arrive in moments, before she’s even had a chance to faux-soften butter in the microwave. She’s careful to check their reflections in a convenient kitchen window._ _

__Archie _is_ a lot taller than her now. How had she not noticed this yesterday, or the day before, or...well, she sees him practically every day, one way or another. _ _

__Her insides feel slippery and hot when they shouldn’t, and she’s grateful for the whir of the electric mixer so she has a noisy thing to focus on, and to the oven for providing an excuse in case she flushes, and even to Jughead for stealing enough raw cookie dough to give a horse salmonella._ _

__“Do horses _get_ salmonella?” he asks, and Betty is forced to admit she has no idea. _ _

They’re gone before too much longer, Betty having received a warning _we’re on our way home!_ text from her mother. 

__Her phone buzzes again while she’s brushing her teeth. Archie. Just before her heart takes off, she reads the message._ _

_I found my phone!_

And she’s back to earth. _Great_ , she texts back. 

_Dad says thanks for the ones U sent over_ , and then, _Jughead says we need more cookies._

_Jughead’s on this text chain, he can tell me himself._

Two seconds later, Jughead texts _We need more cookies_. Betty pulls back her curtains just far enough to stick out her tongue at the two of them, but they’re not looking. Or, she realizes (judging by what lights are on next door) even in Archie’s room. 

She sighs and pulls her journal from its hiding place before climbing into bed. Her phone lights up again.

_Thanks, Betty_ , and a cookie emoji. 

This one’s on a private thread, just to her, and she wonders briefly why Jughead would bother with that. 

_Good night, weirdo_ , she types. Then she erases the last word and sends _Good night, Jughead_ instead. 

______ _ _

* * * * * 

_Of course Betty Cooper has a Christmas sweater_ , he thinks, the last day before winter break. Of course she does. Jughead’s standing in front of his locker, contemplating what needs to get shoved in his backpack and what can stay here over the holidays, and there’s Betty Cooper, Christmas elf, or something. She’s holding a binder under one arm and he imagines, wildly and stupidly, that she’s on her way to deliver Santa’s naughty-or-nice list.

Once she’s closer, he realizes he’s wrong; Betty has a red cardigan over a pale green blouse. Still. Christmas. And of course she does. 

“You’re festive,” he tells her, which is a great line by no one’s standards. 

“Would you believe I had a fight with my mom over whether I could wear this out of the house?” 

He wouldn’t. He’s never seen Betty wear anything he could imagine a parent finding inappropriate. In fact, this looks exactly like what she wears every other day of the week, and probably on weekends. It’s just...festive. 

“‘Red is not your color, Betty, it’s too harsh.’ Never mind she had me and Polly in red skirts two weeks ago for the family Christmas card photo shoot. But I guess that was an ‘accent color’ and not close to my face, so it was okay.” 

He’s busy contemplating exactly what is wrong with Betty’s mother when Kevin Keller magically appears at her elbow, eyebrows raised. 

“Did you decide on a dress for tomorrow?” 

Betty nods. “Yes. The black and white white one I showed you. I think.” 

“The tea length with the tulle skirt? Not the blue one?” 

“I’m…hmm. Ninety-five percent sure on the black and white one?” 

“Perfect,” says Kevin, clapping his hands. “It’s the black and white.”

Betty laughs. 

“Kev, I told you we don’t have to match. It’s a pretty casual dance, and you and I are very obviously going as friends.” 

“We’re not going to match. We’re going to coordinate.” 

“Well, black and white go with everything, so what’s the problem?” 

“None. That dress is going to look _amazing_ on you.” 

She laughs again, turning back to Jughead; he automatically braces himself for what he knows is coming. 

“Are you going with anyone?” 

He shakes his head, and when this response appears insufficient, adds, “I’m not going, period.” 

“Jughead!” Betty admonishes. “It’s going to be _fun_.” 

“In what universe do you imagine me having fun at a school dance, Betty?” 

“That’s a fair point,” says Kevin. Jughead shoots him a look, but it’s okay, he knows Kevin well enough to know it’s not an insult. 

“Fine, be that way.” Betty’s tone is half-mocking, faux-sarcastic (she will never, he thinks, manage a full mock). But she’s looking right into his eyes and her face is making at least six different expressions simultaneously and he’s suddenly not at all sure how he feels about his status as Jughead Jones, puzzle to be solved.

“No, seriously. Come, and appreciate the irony of me, the one out gay kid in the entire school, also being the only freshman who actually asked a girl to go with him.” 

“Not true,” says Betty, swatting at Kevin with the binder she’s holding. “I know Reggie asked Cricket O’Dell.” 

And then she tucks the binder back under one arm and _grabs one of his hands with both of hers._

“You should come.” 

He says nothing.

On the walk from his bus stop to the current house (he refuses, stubbornly, to think of it as “home”), Jughead’s the one working out a mental puzzle. The puzzle is Archie Andrews, the pieces are ones he’s been playing with for a while now, and the solution is so obvious that Jughead can’t quite bring himself to believe it. 

Archie is going to the dance. Jughead knows this, because it has been the sole topic of conversation at lunch for the last week and even a guy who’s trying not to listen is bound to pick up the general gist of things. Archie has considered asking at least ten different girls over the course of December, eventually settling on asking none of them. Whether this is due to apathy or nervousness or some collective unspoken agreement among the freshman class males that asking girls to dances is uncool, Jughead neither knows nor cares. 

Betty was never under consideration. That’s weird, right? He’s very sure that it’s weird.

The solution is that his best friend is an idiot. 

In fact, Jughead has a very good reason for not attending the winter dance that has nothing to do with the fact that there is no universe in which he would have fun at it, and that reason is childcare. Jellybean insists she’s old enough to stay home alone, but...no. They haven’t seen his dad in a week, so his mother is picking up extra waitressing shifts at some shitty bar on the southside. It’s a job that may or may not have been arranged by large tattooed men in leather jackets (again, Jughead doesn’t want to know). 

“Is there anything for dinner?” 

“Frozen pizza.” His mom pauses halfway out the door, as though she’s going to impart some words of wisdom before she departs, but none come out, just a quiet “Thanks, Jughead.” 

“No problem,” he mutters. She doesn’t know he’s missing any sort of social event to babysit his little sister, and he hopes she doesn’t somehow find out, because it’s not like she needs to worry more about him than she already does. Though truth be told, he has no idea how much his mother worries about him, or even if she does at all. She’s not obvious about it. Like him, she finds detachment a fairly natural state of being.

It strikes him—harder than it has in a long time—how rough she looks, how beaten down. (Not literally beaten, for which he is eternally grateful: his father’s a drunk, but not a violent one.) How young she looks, under the roughness. 

She _is_ young. He forgets that sometimes. 

Theirs has always been a tenuous relationship. Jughead likes to envision it as an onion, with layers. The first layer you peel back, the surface one, is a pretty easy layer. His mother loves him on some level, he knows that. But then you go down a level (or layer, whatever, it’s not a perfect metaphor) and the fumes start to sting. This is the layer of resentment she sometimes wields at him, or not _him_ exactly but the situation his existence put her in, not (to cop an overdone phrase) that he asked to be born. 

And then after you peel through that layer there’s really just more resentment, all the way down to the center. Before you know it the entire kitchen stinks and the juice seeps into the skin of your fingers and you’re crying, because that’s what onions do when you poke at their insides. They make you cry. 

All this is to say that Jughead Jones has never been brave enough to ask his mother why she kept him, why _this_ was the life she chose to have, when the much-too-old-to-be-appropriate F.P. Jones the Second knocked her up senior year of high school. Why she never tried to finish high school, or get a G.E.D. Why F.P. Jones the Second in the first place. Why any of it, really. 

And, also, he needs a better metaphor.

* * * * * 

The Riverdale High Winter Ball is what it is, right up until it turns into a waking nightmare. Betty lists the pros and cons in her journal when she gets home that night.

Pro: She looks pretty. The YouTube hair tutorials haven’t let her down. She has something resembling soft curls, pinned behind each ear (because there is something to be said for keeping your hair out of your face). Even her mother acknowledges that the dress is, quote, “flattering.” 

Con: The only people who notice are her dad, Kevin, and Ethel Muggs. Oh, sure, Archie gives her shoulder a squeeze and says “You look great, Betty.” But the way he says it gives her deja vu for a weird moment until she realizes that before she drove them to the dance, Polly also squeezed her shoulder and uttered the words “You look great, Betty,” in exactly the same tone of voice. 

Pro: Despite promises made to their mother, Polly does not attempt to babysit her. 

Con: None. At least, no immediate cons. 

Pro: Archie doesn’t dance with any other girls. 

Con: This is because Kevin and (weirdly) Dilton Doiley are the only freshman boys willing to dance at all. The entire freshman football team has overtaken a corner of the gym, and there they stay all night. On occasion, one detaches for long enough to grab punch or say hi to what Kevin calls the “non-football plebeians,” but. Archie’s one of them. He stays with her and Kevin for a while, actually, but seems completely oblivious to the fact that one is meant to dance at a dance. 

It seems to be something the boys grow out of, though. Many of the upperclassmen are dancing. 

“Selfie, though, Arch?” 

“Sure!” 

“Wait, Archie, give me your phone,” interjects Kevin. She makes a mental note to thank him, later, for whatever version of wingman duty this might be.

They squeeze together for two selfies on Betty’s phone and then let Kevin get one from a more normal angle. Before Kevin can hand the phone back, Archie’s wandered off to...stare weirdly at Josie for no reason she can think of? 

“Is he?” muses Kevin. 

“Going to realize he doesn’t have his phone? Not for a while.” Kevin hands the phone to her, and she checks the screen.

It’s a _really_ good picture. Really good. Impulsively, she texts it to Jughead with a quick _wish you were here!_ before shoving the phone in her clutch. Jughead’s undoubtedly rolling his eyes at her, wherever he is. Pop’s, she imagines, with a cup of black coffee (he is the _only_ fifteen-year-old she knows who drinks coffee at all, let alone black) and a determined “I’m writing” scowl. The mental image makes her smile. 

Pro: She has fun, overall. A lot of fun. So much fun that she loses track of certain things, like time, and her sister. 

Con: Polly was supposed to be her ride home. 

It’s not that getting home is in any way difficult. Archie’s dad calls to say he’s leaving for the school now, and, well, she answers it. 

“Mr. Andrews? It’s Betty. I’m hanging on to Archie’s phone.” 

“Hi, Betty.” 

“Could I get a ride home with you?” 

And that’s that. She flags down Archie from across the gym, squeezes into the middle seat of the truck, gets the satisfaction of having Archie’s arm sort of kind of around her shoulder since he’s suddenly all limbs and there’s nowhere else to put it. 

No, the difficult part is explaining why she’s arrived home without Polly in tow. 

_Where did your sister go? Why weren’t you watching her? Who did she leave with?_ These are questions Betty hears over and over, until two in the morning, hissed by one parent and then the other until it dawns on Betty that the plan was not for Polly to babysit her, but rather, quite the opposite. 

At two in the morning Polly attempts to sneak in the back door, at which point Betty finally manages to escape to her room. Raised voices continue downstairs well into the early hours of the dawn. She longs to talk with Polly, ask her what the hell is going on. But sleep comes for Betty Cooper long before Polly makes it up the stairs. 

She awakes the next morning to the smell of maple syrup and bacon, usually a sign that it’s safe to go downstairs. 

“Mom?” But her mother isn’t in the kitchen. 

“In here, darling!”

Venturing into the dining room, she finds her parents and Polly, sitting calmly around a table covered in stacks of pancakes like something out of _Father Knows Best_. They’re all dressed already. There’s an _apron_. Her mother is literally wearing heels and a frilly apron. For breakfast. On a Saturday.

“What is going on?” 

“You’re just in time for breakfast,” says her mom. 

“Have a seat,” says her dad. 

Betty slides into the chair across from Polly. Polly says nothing. There’s a serene smile on her lips that doesn’t reach anywhere near her eyes. 

“Why are we in the Twilight Zone?” 

“I don’t know what you mean, Betty,” says her mother. “Everything’s fine. Eat your pancakes.”

* * * * * 

_wish you were here!_

Goddammit. The ponytail is down. 

(He knows Betty’s the one who sent this text, even if it came from Archie’s phone.) 

Goddammit. 

(His best friend is an idiot.)

Jughead Jones leans back against the bedroom wall, slides his beanie over his eyes, and waits for the world to hurry up and crumble already.


	2. Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmastime is here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All righty! I thought the second chapter was going to be about 6k again and span New Year's to the end of the school year, but then I started writing, and, well, this happened instead. We will get to those occasions in good time. 
> 
> Thanks as always to diaphenia, who is a beautiful strawberry milkshake, and is hanging in there even though I can't write Veronica into this one.

The Greendale Town Center Mall has zero available parking spots today. 

This is fine with Betty; she’s got shopping to finish, and it’s much easier to accomplish said shopping if her dad gives up and drops her and Kevin off instead of following them around. They’ve waved him good-bye and stamped as much slush as possible from their boots. 

“Where to?” Kevin asks. 

A list waits in the pocket of Betty’s jeans, folded neatly, but she doesn’t need to consult it. She knows it by heart. First things first. She takes a deep breath. 

“Okay. What says, really subtly, ‘Merry Christmas to my best friend, but maybe also a little more if you’re up for it, but if not that’s completely okay because our friendship is the most important thing to me’—”

“‘—but also kiss me already, I promise you’ll like it’?”

This is the most furiously Betty has ever blushed in her life, she’s sure of it. Never in a million years would she have the guts to speak such words aloud. Never. Ever. In a million years. Times two. 

Kevin nods. “I’m taking that as a yes.”

“ _Kevin_ —”

“And you also have to be able to buy it somewhere at this mall.” 

“For under twenty-five dollars.” 

“That’s a tall order.” Kevin thinks a moment, raises his eyebrows. “Almost as tall as—”

“Don’t even say it.” 

Kevin shoots her a wicked grin, scooting out of her reach—and in the process, almost takes out a mannequin dressed in a truly hideous Christmas sweater. At this display of fashion, he mimes vomiting. Betty contemplates this for a moment. 

“Well,” she says wryly, “at least now I know what to get _you_ for Christmas.” 

She knows Kevin knows she’s not serious, but his face pales anyway. 

“That’s it, Betty. I’m breaking up with you.” 

She laughs as she follows Kevin out of menswear and through women’s shoes, but nevertheless, there’s a weight pressing on Betty’s heart that has everything and nothing to do with Archie Andrews. Everything because he’s her best friend and she’s his and she _knows_ him, knows how hard the holidays have been for him since his parents split up. He’s never said anything to her, but it’s obvious from the way he quietens as soon as school gets out, the wistful look he gets when he and Mr. Andrews string lights along their gutters. 

And then nothing because her own family is…she honestly doesn’t know what they are at the moment. 

“Betty. Earth to Betty.” 

She snaps back to attention. “Sorry. What?” 

“I said, what are your gift exchanges usually like?” 

“Um…” 

Last year she gave Archie a book she thought he’d like; she has no evidence he ever read it. He had given her a Chicago-themed coffee mug for her last birthday; it sits on her desk, holding pencils. But last year she hadn’t been shopping with much of an ulterior motive in mind, her feelings about the boy next door (ugh) having been almost entirely platonic, still. 

She shouldn’t be shopping with an ulterior motive in mind this year, either. She knows that, knows she should just be enjoying herself. Christmas is Betty’s favorite holiday by far, and Christmas shopping has always been one of her favorite holiday activities. She loves the endlessly repeating familiar music blaring from all the mall speakers, the giant bows and baubles strung everywhere, the piped-in scent of pine trees. She loves watching all the kids waiting in line to meet Santa, which reminds her of her own childhood. 

(Polly would be on tiptoes the whole time, eager to get to the front of the line and whisper in Santa’s ear. Betty always imitated her older sister, but while clutching her mother’s hand for moral support, because she knew Santa was about to ask her an impossible question. “Have you been a good girl this year?” he’d always say, the official line of mall Santas worldwide, and she, little Betty Cooper, would nod seriously through her churning stomach and whisper “yes,” knowing she had been good but never certain she had been good _enough_.) 

Most of all, she loves the satisfaction of finding exactly the right thing for exactly the right person. It’s a challenge of exactly the right order. And she could use that kind of challenge right about now.

* * * * *

“What’s going on over at Manderley?”

Archie looks up from the old acoustic guitar he’s been tuning. “Manderley?” 

“Next door. The Coopers’.” 

Jughead nods over towards their house. He’s referring not to the elaborate-yet-tasteful Christmas decorations (these he knows to be an annual feature), but to the Coopers themselves, specifically Hal and Alice, who are having what Jughead presumes to be the tasteful middle-class equivalent of a knock-down, drag-out fight in their garage. He can’t hear anything, since tasteful middle-class people don’t raise their voices, but there’s a vein in Hal’s neck that’s bulging so hard Jughead can damn near read his pulse. Alice, he sees, fights colder. 

Archie joins him at the window, but only for a couple of moments. He settles back on the bed and picks up the guitar again.

“I feel weird watching them,” he says quietly, leaving an implicit “don’t you?” hanging between them. Jughead shrugs—it’s not like he’s judging anyone, just observing—but sidles away from the window anyway, leaning himself against the footboard of Archie’s bed instead. 

“‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?’” he quotes.

“What?” 

“ _Pride and Prejudice_.” That earns him a puzzled look. “Yes, Archie, I read Jane Austen.” 

Then it strikes him that he’s in Archie’s room right now because Archie’s off to his mom’s in Chicago tomorrow morning, and immediately feels like an asshole. Christmases have been hard for Archie since his parents split. The fact that he’s actually confessed as much to Jughead means something. It means Jughead is an asshole who should change the subject, and to something other than multiple books he knows perfectly well that Archie has neither read nor seen movie adaptations of. 

“So you’re really going to learn to play it this time?” he asks, gesturing towards the guitar. 

“Yeah, I think so.” Archie strums a few chords. They don’t sound entirely wrong. 

“That’s cool.”

At this, Archie brightens. “Yeah?” 

“Sure. Guitar, football…” He glances at Vegas, asleep on the floor. “Labrador retriever. You’re only one vintage convertible and a high school sweetheart away from being the most stereotypically American teenager to have ever walked God’s green earth.” 

And there he goes again with the not thinking before he speaks. The amount of self-control it takes to keep his eyes from flickering to a certain window when he says the words _high school sweetheart_ is staggering. 

Archie half-chuckles at that. 

And then, for some reason, Jughead _keeps going_. 

“Why, take one Miss Elizabeth Cooper,” he says, affecting an old-timey TV announcer’s voice, if old-timey TV announcers had been allowed sarcasm. “Now there’s a little lady who can bake you an apple pie just as fast as she can change a white-walled tire on your jalopy.” Jughead has no idea whether Betty has ever baked an apple pie. Changing a tire—that he’s seen her do. Or at least, he’s seen her help her dad do it, and assumes she could accomplish the task herself if necessary.

There’s a sputter of laughter from the bed. “ _Betty_?” 

“She _is_ a girl,” he observes quietly. Neutrally. He hopes. 

( _Hermione, you’re a girl_ , his brain contributes, but he successfully squashes that quote down even though he knows Archie _has_ read all the Harry Potter books, was even moderately obsessed with Harry Potter for a few months. There are embarrassing pictures of their fifth-grade Halloween costumes to prove it: Archie in a maroon Weasley sweater emblazoned with a giant A, and him in wizard’s robes, plastic round-framed spectacles, and a magic marker lightning scar.)

(They were actually pretty adorable; he can admit that. It’s the cliché of it all that bugs him now.)

“Yeah, but she’s Betty.” 

Thankfully, Jughead manages to regain control over his mouth before any more thoughts about Betty Cooper are spoken aloud. 

(His best friend is an idiot.) 

“Oh, crap,” Archie says then. “Betty.” 

Jughead raises an eyebrow; Archie raises the guitar from his lap and dives for his phone. 

“We haven’t exchanged Christmas presents yet. Jug, do you mind if I run over there real quick?” 

“Of course not,” he says, shrugging off the weird twinge that comes with the new-to-him information that Archie and Betty exchange Christmas presents. He and Archie never have, or at least, not since they were little. 

Archie leaps to his feet and shoves his shoes on. For a moment, Jughead braces himself for the inevitable next step, tearing apart the bedroom looking for Betty’s Christmas present, but Archie apparently knows where it is. 

“I’ll be back in five.” 

Jughead nods. “Take your time.” 

He hears Archie clatter down the stairs, followed by a rustling under the Christmas tree and the opening and closing of the front door. 

He stays put for a moment, then his masochistic streak kicks in and he _has_ to look. From the bedroom window, he can see that Archie and Betty are at the Coopers’ front door, but that’s about it—so he heads downstairs himself. Archie’s recent admonition still resonating, Jughead grabs a soda from the fridge and then sits on the front steps of the Andrews house. He can’t see very much from this vantage point either, but at least now he’s upgraded himself from spying to merely lurking in the background, which is pretty much his natural habitat anyway. From what he can tell, Archie and Betty have already exchanged and unwrapped gifts, and are now sharing a friendly hug. 

Betty suddenly peers past Archie, delivers some sort of admonishment. They both turn to look at Jughead; Betty gives him a little wave (he raises his soda can in acknowledgement), and disappears inside, though Archie makes no move to leave. The front door reopens a few moments later to reveal Betty again, now with a jacket thrown over her sweater and some sort of bag in her hand. 

She’s coming right for him. Archie follows. 

Jughead stands up and pops down the front stairs, and they meet just on the Andrews side of the lawn divide. He’s relieved to see she doesn’t look pissed at him—just mildly annoyed. 

“Jughead, Archie didn’t tell me you were over.” She shoots a look over her shoulder as she says it, and it hits him that she’s annoyed at Archie, not him. 

He shrugs. “I’m a ghost in the night.” 

“It’s the middle of the afternoon,” she says, in her best _don’t be stupid_ voice. This is not a voice to which Jughead quite knows how to react; he therefore continues being stupid, and focuses on Archie instead. 

“Whatcha got there?” he asks, indicating the gift Archie’s unwrapped. 

They respond in unison. “It’s a scarf.”

Archie holds up the scarf—blue and gold stripes, perfect Riverdale colors, with tassels at each end. 

“Oh,” says Jughead, because of course it’s something simultaneously warm and hug-like and practical. A pause follows, and mercifully, Jughead manages to tell Archie to try it on, just before things get awkward. 

Archie obediently wraps the scarf around his neck; Jughead steals a glance at Betty, who looks pleased but hesitant. 

“Suits you,” he says, keeping his eyes turned in that direction. He’s not wearing a jacket, and the cold is just starting to really bite through his flannel shirt. 

“You think?” Now Archie looks pleased. “It’s really soft. Thanks again, Betty.” 

Betty’s cheeks turn very slightly pink. “Anyway,” she says, turning to Jughead and holding out the bag, “Merry Christmas.” 

He accepts it with a quizzical look. 

“Cookies,” she explains. “I’m sorry I didn’t—” She stops at the intensification of his quizzical look. “If I’d known you were coming over, I would have made the kind you like.” 

“Pretty sure I like all the kinds.” 

“I know you do. I just…” She throws up her hands. 

_What?_ Jughead wonders. _Do you want to make everyone happy all of the time? Do you just genuinely like doing things for other people? Are you trying to impress Archie by being nice to his other best friend?_ Probably a little of all of it, really. 

“You don’t have to give me anything.” 

“Please,” Betty says. There is, actually, some sort of plea in her eyes that disappears when she blinks. “We made so many. It’s not like I can eat them all myself.” 

Plus, her parents. Jughead has no idea how Betty, specifically, reacts to parental fights, but he’s only too familiar with how they make _him_ feel. So he does what seems like the most logical thing in that moment: he opens the bag and shoves half a cookie in his mouth. 

“See?” he chokes out, through crumbs. “Delicious.” 

Betty lets out a somewhat strangled half-laugh, so, mission accomplished, he supposes. Then she glances down the street, as though she expects her fighting parents to materialize from thin air. 

“I gotta go,” she says. “Merry Christmas, both of you. Archie, have fun in Chicago. Say hi to your mom for me.” 

She quickly hugs them both, then rushes back inside before Jughead can quite process that the conversation’s over and he, like either an asshole or a feral animal, has forgotten his manners. 

Once he and Archie are back in Archie’s room (Archie now digging through the cookies), he texts her a quick _Thanks, Betty_ and then _You really didn’t have to bestow cookies upon me_ and _Obviously I’m going to eat them anyway_ and _Merry Christmas_. 

A moment later, he receives _lol. Merry Christmas, Jughead._

__

“Hey,” he asks, curiosity piqued. “What did you get Betty?” 

“Hmm? Oh.” Archie, somehow, possesses the ability to speak with his mouth full and not spray crumbs everywhere. This is not the element of Archie’s existence that Jughead _most_ envies, but it’s pretty far up there. “Picture frame.”

“Picture frame?”

“I always get her a picture frame.” 

Jughead spends his walk home that evening contemplating whether or not there’s any hidden symbolism to an endless supply of picture frames, but lets it go as he approaches the house. It’s still not home, but it’s been feeling surprisingly homey as of late. His father’s been in and out for the past few weeks, but sober, or at least sober-ish. That in itself is enough to make the holidays feel like a win. 

It is hard for Jughead to admit—even to himself—how much he likes Christmas. The Joneses have never been huge on traditions, but even their general dysfunction has sprung a solid three of them, and to these Jughead adheres absolutely, when he can. The third and least important tradition is a Christmas afternoon snowball fight, which of course is dependent on the weather.

The oldest and second-most important tradition is the tree, a cheap and now shabby artificial mess that they’ve had Jughead’s whole life. The thing is just this side of Charlie Brown territory, but it’s _theirs_ , and its unboxing, accompanied for some reason by a traditional dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, is always a highlight of December. A lot of his father’s recent disappearances have had something to with actual employment, and so there are new strings of lights, replacing the old half-burnt out set. (The improved illumination paradoxically makes the tree look worse overall, but.) Every time Jughead enters the house, he can almost imagine that it smells like real pine. This is because someone has stuck a little tree-shaped car air freshener to one of the bottom branches, where it blends in surprisingly well with their motley collection of handmade school-project ornaments. 

(Someone is trying. At least someone is trying.) 

There are presents under the tree this year too, not an extravagant amount by any stretch, but a few more boxes than normal—and not all from his mom’s parents in Toledo, either. 

But Christmas, as everyone knows, doesn’t come from a store. So, considering that someone’s been trying (and he’s pretty sure that someone is his dad) it stings just a little bit harder when F.P. Jones the Second steps out after dinner on Christmas Eve and doesn’t return until well after Jellybean’s supposed to have gone to bed. And fine, fuck it, Jughead’s old enough to deal. But his sister shouldn’t have to, and it damn near breaks his heart, watching her trying to keep disappointment off her face as she waits by the tree, tattered copy of _The Night Before Christmas_ in hand. Because that’s the one real, inviolate Christmas tradition, and their father has just violated it. 

(Their mother has already gone to bed with “a headache.” This is probably code for something worse than a headache, Jughead knows.) 

So he spreads the few remaining cookies from Betty on a plate and takes them into the living room, knowing his little sister is already too cool, too stoic, to break in front of anyone. 

“C’mere,” he tells her, arranging himself on the creaky old couch. Thankfully, she’s still uncool enough to curl up next to him, tucking her tiny frame under his arm; they read the book aloud together, trading verses, stealing cookies when it’s the other’s turn to read. 

Jellybean gives him a friendly punch when it’s over. “You didn’t leave any for Santa.” 

She’s just as guilty of making cookies disappear as he is; there’s solid evidence of this, red and green sugar stuck to her cheek. So, in response, Jughead brushes it off and raises an eyebrow at her. They both know she hasn’t believed in Santa for years.

“This house doesn’t have a chimney,” he points out. “How do you think he’s going to get in?” 

Her voice comes out small, quiet—far too sad, far too serious. “That’s not the point.” 

Together, they stare at the empty plate. Then Jellybean hugs him as hard as she can and whispers _I love you_ into his neck. 

“Love you too,” he whispers back. 

And then she brushes her teeth and puts herself to bed, lights off right away and everything, because that’s the kind of kid she is. 

At three in the morning, Jughead’s still awake—barely. He’s almost to the end of _The Shop Around the Corner_ , bleary-eyed, but hanging in there until Jimmy Stewart demonstrates that he does, in fact, have great legs. 

He’s also got headphones on and doesn’t hear the front door, so it’s a bit of a shock when the bedroom door creaks open to reveal a man in a leather jacket silhouetted in the doorframe. 

“Dad.” He whips his headphones off. “What the hell—”

F.P. slides in the room and crosses to stand over the bed, remarkably silent for a man shod in motorcycle boots. “Thought you’d be asleep.” 

Jughead declines to react, and his father chuckles. 

“Waiting up for Santa?” 

He’s close enough to smell now, which Jughead acknowledges is a strange way to think about distance, but an understandable one when someone’s personal scent has changed as much as F.P.’s has over the years. Jughead has distinct childhood memories of dust and sweat and aftershave, a comforting combination that he now experiences only in close proximity to Fred Andrews. Dust and cigarettes and gasoline is a less pleasant but still tolerable mélange. Right now, F.P.’s giving off cigarettes, about four days without showering, and a handful of beers. For this reason, Jughead chooses not to make any room on the bed. He merely stares hard into his father’s eyes until F.P. shrugs and drops into Jughead’s wobbly desk chair. 

“What do you want, Dad?” 

It’s only then he realizes his father’s holding out a crumpled envelope. Jughead takes it, but doesn’t look inside. F.P. waits for a moment, but seems to accept that he’s not going to out-stubborn his son on this one.

“I just want you to know, when you open what’s under the tree tomorrow…” F.P. nods towards the envelope. “It’s honest.” 

_What’s that supposed to mean?_ is on the tip of his tongue, but he’s still pissed at his father for skipping out earlier, and decides not to give him the satisfaction of asking. 

“Well,” says F.P., standing up to leave. “Night, then.” 

“Night.” (He’ll give his dad that much.) 

The envelope gets tossed on Jughead’s desk, and he slams his laptop shut, not bothering to restart the movie just for the last two minutes. 

Jellybean wakes him at a more or less reasonable hour the next morning. He pulls a sweater over his t-shirt and tugs his beanie on, not bothering to exchange his pajama pants for jeans. To his mild surprise, both parents are up already. His mother’s preparing something resembling breakfast with an honest-to-god smile on her face, a stocking filled with candy waits at his usual place at the table, and his father, damp around the edges, smells like shampoo and coffee. 

“Merry Christmas?” he asks. It is, genuinely, a question. 

“Merry Christmas,” answers F.P. 

Under the tree is a moderately large box that wasn’t there last night. _To Jughead, from Santa_. Expecting nothing—or maybe, like, new pajamas—he tears open the paper. And then his heart skips a beat. 

Inside the box is a new laptop. Well—refurbished. But newish, and about three steps up from the quasi-brick he’s been carting around for the past year. 

He looks up at his father, who raises an eyebrow. “Don’t look at me,” says F.P. “Tag said Santa. Santa knows you need the right tools to get the job done.” 

Jughead is aware that slowly, involuntarily, a smile is creeping across his face that has very little to do with the unexpected return of construction references. “Well…thanks, Santa.” 

Jellybean scowls at him. “You weren’t that much better than I was this year.” 

“Uh, obviously I was.” 

But then she opens a refurbished iPod Classic and all is forgiven, especially after Jughead offers her the old laptop for her own. 

F.P. gets up and heads to the kitchen then, where Jughead’s mom has retreated to make more coffee, and Jughead slips back to his bedroom while no one’s looking. He finds the envelope from last night and empties its contents over his desk. 

Pay stubs. Sales receipts. 

For a few glorious moments, Jughead lets himself genuinely believe that some sort of obstacle has been conquered, that the upcoming new year will be different. Better. In celebration of the lifting cloud, he goes so far as to put on actual clothes, layering a green t-shirt under a red flannel, even digging out his gloves and tucking them in a pants pocket. 

“Hey, Jellybean,” he calls. “Challenge you to...”

Then he walks past his father, who’s back on the couch, and catches a whiff of something grainy and distilled under the fresh coffee. All the air seems to leave his lungs. 

“What?” yells Jellybean from the floor, where she’s immersed in the iPod instruction manual. 

“Snowball fight?” 

“In a minute,” she says, not looking up. 

Jughead swallows hard and glances over at his jacket, hanging by the door. “I’ll be outside.” 

“‘Kay.”

He’s wandering aimlessly in the nearby woods when his phone vibrates once. 

_Merry Christmas, everybody!_

Betty, no doubt texting the entirety of her address book. A photo arrives half a second later, her perfect smile and perfect ponytail captured in a perfect selfie in front of a perfect tree. Jughead knows perfectly well that Betty’s life is not perfect, but god, does he envy her ability to make it at least _appear_ that way, when she wants to. 

For a moment, he contemplates composing his own selfie. Which would be a more authentic representation of the Jones family Christmas, he wonders? Jughead out here, alone, in the woods? Or back in the house, staged in depth to capture himself, his drunk father, and their shitty fake tree? 

Jughead shuts the screen off and shoves the phone back in his pocket. 

There’s no need to respond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments and reviews are always appreciated. 
> 
> (I'm on tumblr very little, but I'm stillscape over there as well. Feel free to say hi!)


	3. New Year's Eve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day after Christmas --> New Year's Eve, freshman year. Still canon-compliant. Still a glacially slow burn for that reason.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to diaphenia, who is a beautiful drink of maple blended whiskey, and is perpetually wearing a tiara in my head canon. 
> 
> Thanks also to everyone who has been reading along so far. Comments are always appreciated!

Thirty-five thousand feet is cruising altitude: high enough to be smooth sailing, above the clouds and the petty problems best left at ground level. It’s also the altitude at which Betty Cooper first discovers that her fingernails are capable of piercing flesh.

At this moment, at 35,000 feet, she’s crammed uncomfortably into 32B, with Polly mute and unresponsive in 32A and their mother reclined as far back as 32C will allow. Alice Cooper is serene in her moderate repose, a satin sleeping mask over her eyes—though Betty’s fairly sure she isn’t asleep. Their father sits a few rows ahead, impossible to see from here. Betty’s fairly sure he _is_ asleep.

“You packed at least one nice dress for dinner, I hope.” Nope. Alice Cooper is not asleep.

“Yes, Mom.”

There’s a long pause before Alice finally says, simply, “Polly.”

Polly’s gaze remains fixed on some indistinguishable spot outside the plane’s window. When she speaks, her voice is too soft to be a spit, too dull for a hiss. But only just.

“You know what I packed.”

Eyes still hidden beneath her mask, Alice uncrosses and re-crosses her legs. “You’ll need to hang up your nice clothes as soon as we get to your grandparents’ house.”

“Yes, Mom,” Betty repeats automatically.

Polly scoffs.

The plane glides on, carrying them farther and farther from Riverdale. Farther and farther, Betty knows, from Jason Blossom. She wonders, but doesn’t ask, exactly how much money four extremely last-minute plane tickets to Florida cost her parents. It’s not like she doesn’t want to see Grammy and Grandpa Cooper. She loves her grandparents, of course. She would just have preferred to have more than twelve hours between when the trip is announced and when the plane takes off.

(There is also the small matter of the near-omnipresent tension that fills the corners of any confined space in which her mother and her father’s parents are forced to co-exist. Only once has either of her parents let slip that something might be amiss in that particular relationship.

“It’s taken a lot of years for your grandparents to understand how much I love your mother,” Hal had told her once—before Thanksgiving dinner the year Betty was eleven.

“Why wouldn’t they understand that?”

“Sometimes parents have different ideas for their children than their children have for themselves,” he’d said. The phrase struck Betty as impossibly wise, but before she could work out exactly what it meant, he’d added “You know what helped them most of all? Seeing how beautiful and smart and helpful you and Polly turned out.”

Betty had been extra helpful that Thanksgiving.)

At 35,000 feet, for some reason, it’s difficult to concentrate on her book. She crams it into the seat back pocket and tries closing her eyes, though she knows she won’t sleep. She merely jiggles slightly against her headrest, which is not meant to accommodate either ponytails or anyone who wants to sit comfortably. 

“I have to use the restroom,” Polly announces a few minutes later.

Betty’s quick to open her eyes. “So do I.” She has not had a chance to talk to her sister alone since the fight or, more accurately, the most recent fight. The Big Fight. 

It’s only when she goes to unbuckle her seatbelt and her knuckles crack that she registers how tightly her fists have been clenched.

Alice pushes up her sleeping mask and gracefully rises from her seat. For a moment, Betty fears she’ll have to justify needing to pee at the same moment Polly does, but Alice silently steps aside and lets them scoot into the aisle.

“Polly,” Betty mutters, once she thinks they’re safely out of Alice’s hearing range. “Polly, what is happening?”

Polly shoots a cold, blurred look at her as they arrive at the occupied restrooms. “Whatever Mom and Dad have told you, it’s a lie.”

“They haven’t told me anything.”

Polly doesn’t respond.

One of the stalls opens up. By the time Betty and the exiting passenger are done with their awkward dance of negotiation, Polly’s disappeared inside. For a moment, Betty contemplates waiting for her sister to emerge—but the other stall door opens, there’s a line forming behind her, and she does actually have to go, so she takes the opportunity.

Washing her hands in the tiny sink, she notices a small fingernail-shaped crease in the center of her left palm. Just one. Obviously, her fists were clenched even tighter than she realized. She traces the mark with her right index finger, then runs the pad of her left thumb over the other four fingernails. Nothing feels sharp. She dries her hands with a handful of thin paper towels and smooths her palms down over her thighs.

Everything is fine.

When she returns to the seat, Polly’s clearly just swallowed something and her mother’s tucking a small pill bottle back into her carry-on.

“What was that?”

Polly’s mouth starts to open, but Alice gets words out first.

“Polly needed a Tylenol. You know flying gives her headaches.”

Betty cannot recall knowing any such thing. Nor can she recall extreme drowsiness as a side effect of Tylenol. Nevertheless, within twenty minutes, Polly’s passed out against the window.

Everything is fine.

The flight attendants push the drink cart down the aisle. Betty orders ginger ale, knowing this is the one time her mother won’t quibble with her over a sugary soda. She wraps both hands around the tiny plastic cup and feels a slight sting from the condensation.

She doesn’t dare to look until her mother’s sleeping mask goes back on; as soon as it does, she peels her palms away. Now there are four tiny creases—deeper but still tiny—three on one hand and one on the other.

Watery pink droplets run onto her tray table. Quickly, she mops them up with the beverage napkin. After a sideways glance to make sure that the sleeping mask is still in place, Betty unfolds her fingers, placing her hands palm up on her tray table.

Everything is _fine_.

She mops her palms, gulps down the ginger ale, dabs her palms again, strategically wads up the napkin and stuffs it in the cup so the pinkish stains don’t show. Then, just to be safe, she stuffs the cup in her seat back pocket.

What Betty wants most of all is time alone with Polly, but she knows she won’t get it for at least another six hours. First they have to go through luggage collection and rental car acquisition and an hour-long car ride (complete with endless Hal Cooper complaints about toll roads) that for some reason leaves Betty nauseous even though she’s not one for motion sickness.

The official Grammy and Grandpa Cooper Retirement Philosophy states that it is simply impossible to be anything but cheerful in Florida: It’s almost always sunny! It never snows! Your skin never dries out! Betty, honestly, has always begged to differ, though she’s never said so out loud. She finds the heat—and it _is_ hot, even the day after Christmas—draining, and the humidity repressive. Her hair might naturally be almost stick-straight, but frizzy bits still escape from her ponytail as she exits the car and hugs her grandparents.

“You’ve gotten so skinny, Betty!” exclaims Grammy Cooper (while shooting a pointed look at Alice), thus damning Betty to ten days of being completely self-conscious over how much she both is and isn’t eating.

With her parents in the guest bedroom of the two-bedroom condo, she and Polly are resigned to air mattresses and sleeping bags on the living room floor.

“Polly,” she whispers, once she’s certain no one is awake. Polly flips over to face her, and Betty’s heart breaks at the sight of half-dried tears streaking her sister’s face.

“They don’t want me to be happy,” Polly whispers back. “I’m so happy when I’m with him, Betty, and they just—they refuse to see it.”

“With Jason?”

Polly nods. “Everything hurts, Betty. _Everything_.”

It takes everything Betty has to not start crying herself, now. _Sometimes parents have different ideas for their children than their children have for themselves_ is, she senses, exactly the wrong thing to say.

An “Oh, Polly” slips out instead and Betty has no idea whether it carries any meaning whatsoever.

“I can’t sleep.” Polly flips back onto her stomach. “Will you rub my back?”

Betty agrees at once, nodding _yes_ with her soft “Okay.”

Her snow globe flurries are getting harder and harder to shake.

It’s not just the Florida humidity that feels repressive this time. In fact, after a few days crammed in the highly air-conditioned condo with her entire family, leaving only for forced-bonhomie activities like mani-pedis and being shown off to other retired grandparents in the condo community, the humidity outside would be downright liberating, if she could only spend some time in it by herself. That odd black feeling might be made of white Florida sand right now but it’s definitely there. It’s getting in her shoes and irritating her skin and she’s even biting down on it at mealtimes, as though everything she puts in her mouth now is tasteless unwashed lettuce. She has six tiny red creases on her palms and her mother and grandparents are so in tune with each other it’s like they’ve joined a cult. 

But she’s fine. Everything is _fine_.

One evening, just as the sun is beginning to set, she picks up her phone to find that Archie’s sent her and Jughead a selfie from the Chicago Bean. She zooms in on the picture and sees Archie’s flaming red hair peeking out from under a Cubs hat, weirdly distorted in the Bean’s curved surface. He’s wearing the scarf she bought him.

 _Nice scarf_ , she texts. 

_My mom liked it a lot, Betts,_ Archie replies. _She says you have good taste._

Jughead pops up with _Bean, schmean. Tell me when you get to the pizza._

A tiny smile starts welling up inside Betty’s chest, one that she feels could be bigger, broader. It just needs a little push, so she gives it one, and hits “call.” 

Archie picks up on the first ring. “Hey, Betty. What’s up?”

For what feels like the first time all week, no one is watching her; they’re too busy finalizing dinner plans to notice Betty opening the back door. She makes it onto the deck, then down the stairs, where she sits down on the tiny patch of lawn in front of the condo. Grass tickles her toes and she realizes she’s barefoot. 

“I just thought I’d say hi. How Chicago’s treating you?”

“It’s good,” he says, slowly. “A little weird. But not too weird. How’s Florida?”

“Okay?” She barely even remembers texting to let him know they were going. All of it flashes before her and she feels suddenly self-conscious even though she knows Archie can’t see her.

“You…I don’t know. I feel like you usually text more when you’re there.”

“It’s fine. Everything is fine.” She draws a deep breath and everything steadies. “We’ve just been busy. How’s your mom?”

“She’s great,” Archie says. “She’s thinking of getting a cat.” 

“Yeah? Aww. That’ll be cute.”

They stay on the phone for five minutes or so, Betty pumping him for as many details of his Christmas as he can remember. Keeping Archie from asking questions about her trip, or her family, is the easiest thing in the _world_ , and by the time they hang up the tiny smile in her chest is so close to her face anyway that sticking it up there is no trouble at all, really.

* * * * * 

They’re catching up in Pop’s over burgers and milkshakes on December 30th when Archie drops a ridiculous bomb on Jughead.

Well, an invitation. It’s still ridiculous.

“No.”

“Jug, come on,” Archie pleads.

“ _No_ ,” Jughead repeats. “Not gonna happen, Archie. A New Year’s Eve party? A _Reggie Mantle_ New Year’s Eve party? No.”

“It’s not a Reggie Mantle party. The whole defensive line is throwing it.”

“It’s at Reggie Mantle’s house,” Jughead points out. “Ergo, it’s a Reggie Mantle party.”

“I’ll buy you a milkshake the day after.” Archie’s leaning over his elbows on the table now, totally sincere.

Jughead mimics Archie’s body language precisely, leaning over his own elbows, then lifts his eyebrows at his oldest and dearest friend. From here, he’s close enough to murmur in Archie’s ear—so he does, for dramatic effect.

“I’m insulted you think I’m that easy,” he says, before dropping back to his usual slump against the back of the booth.

“It’s not…” Archie stays leaning over the table, all sincerity and hopefulness. “I just don’t want to go by myself, okay? I—”

“I can assure you,” Jughead interrupts, with a near-equal amount of sincerity, “that you’ll have much more fun at this—or indeed any other party—if I’m not there.” Because really, what is Archie going to do? Lurk in the shadows with him? It’s _embarrassing_ , that thought, the certain knowledge that if he attends Reggie Mantle’s New Year’s Eve party, Archie is essentially going to have to babysit him. Either that, or abandon him. Jughead can see no in-between.

Frankly, he’s not even sure Reggie Mantle would let him in the door.

“You know he hates me, right?”

Archie finally leans back with a frustrated sigh, scowling at the handful of fries remaining on his plate.

“He doesn’t hate you, Jug.”

Jughead has to babysit Jellybean tonight and he’s pretty sure the dinner options at home are limited to strawberry Pop Tarts, a bag of frozen lima beans, and a box of Hamburger Helper with no hamburger. Unless someone went shopping.

(He should probably go shopping on his way back.)

“You gonna eat those?”

Archie sighs again, but pushes the plate across the table anyway. After a beat, he sends the ketchup, too.

In the end, he winds up at Reggie Mantle’s New Year’s Eve party. Something to do with a combination of both parents out all day and Jellybean spending the night at a friend’s house and a weird crushing feeling in his chest that leads to him wandering over to the Andrews homestead mid-afternoon. _That_ leads to video games and Archie’s dad ordering pizza for dinner under the mistaken assumption that Jughead is both going to the party with Archie and staying over afterwards.

“I’m not…” Jughead starts, before giving up. A bagged salad has emerged from the fridge at some point and Jughead now pokes at the iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots, and ranch dressing that’s been placed in front of him with his fork. He glances over at Archie, who looks expectant, and then he notices Fred is looking at Archie, and Fred also looks expectant.

Fred’s face is covered in stubble today, but for some reason he still smells like aftershave, and who is Jughead to disappoint such a man?

“I’m not kissing you at midnight, Archie,” he deadpans, and both the Andrews laugh.

Fred drops them off outside the Mantle house at around 9:30 with a bevy of don’ts: don’t drink, don’t hesitate to call when you want a ride home no matter what time it is, don’t do anything he wouldn’t do, don’t lose your phones. Archie looks annoyed at that last one.

“Don’t forget to have fun,” Fred concludes.

“‘Bye, Dad,” says Archie, pointedly, to which Fred chuckles briefly before driving off.

Jughead has not been to Reggie Mantle’s house since he was seven years old, second grade being the last year Riverdale’s parents stuck to the “invite the entire class to your kid’s birthday party” rule, and has less than vague memories of the place. Consequently, he tails Archie for the first hour or so—he’s not _in_ the shadows, he _is_ a shadow, not that Archie minds. But then Archie’s suddenly gone, or not gone exactly but just not checking to see if Jughead is still attached to his hip. He’s in the kitchen with Reggie and Moose and Chuck Clayton, open beer in hand.

Possibly because Jughead has never attended a high school party, Jughead has never seen Archie drink before, and is undecided as to whether or not it bothers him. He is very decided, however, that he has no desire to enter into the background of a conversation with Reggie and Chuck Clayton. (Moose would be fine, probably.)

To put it mildly, there are a lot of people crammed into Reggie Mantle’s house, especially considering the technicality of it being a freshman party; apparently Reggie’s popularity has already extended to the older set. Jughead recognizes about three-quarters of the attendees by sight if not by name: nearly all the jocks at the entire school, for instance, and nearly all of the River Vixens. There are some kids he’s sure he’s never seen in his life, and decides they must be from Greendale or something.

(The Blossoms are conspicuously absent. Jughead feels, in the marrow of his bones, that there will be a dramatic entrance from them at some point; a Dramatic Entrance, even. He makes a mental note to watch out for it so he can 1. Get out of the line of fire and 2. File a description of it away for future writing projects.)

He glances at the clock hanging above Reggie’s head and discovers it’s only 10:43, which means he has at least one hour and seventeen minutes of terrible music and Ryan Seacrest to suffer through. Walking home at this hour would probably be safe—it’s not like anything much ever happens on the North Side—but it’s New Year’s Eve and it’s fucking freezing outside and the Mantles live not just on the North Side, but about as far north as it’s possible to go while maintaining a Riverdale mailing address. Not relishing the prospect of starting the new year with frostbite or a chest cold, Jughead decides to stay put in whatever room this is. If it is even a room. The Mantles have gone for a very open floor concept.

“Oh, my god, this is one for the ages. Jughead Jones has graced us with his presence,” says a voice in his ear. “Look alive, Jughead. We’re having a party, not an apocalypse.”

He looks up to see Kevin Keller wearing a pair of those dumb glasses that announce what year it’s about to be. 

“I know what you’re thinking.” Kevin rolls his eyes. Possibly. It’s hard to tell. “This whole New Year’s glasses thing worked a lot better last decade, when we had two zeroes in a row.”

Jughead snorts. “That is…surprisingly close, actually.”

“It was either that or this stupid hat, and I don’t do stupid hats.” Kevin holds up a tiny, purple, glittery fedora on an elastic string, then glances at Jughead’s beanie. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Jughead replies, though he is, in fact, very slightly offended. Or annoyed. Annoyed is a better word.

“Where’s your other half? Oh, never mind, I see him. Good call on your part, avoiding Reggie.”

At no point in time have Jughead and Kevin ever discussed what is now their ninth year of being, respectively, the weird kid and the gay kid. Gym class has always been far less traumatic than one might imagine—both he and Kevin are, in fact, pretty decent athletes who just happen to hate organized sports. But still, there’s always been some sort of empathetic understanding between them regarding the desirability of avoiding Reggie Mantle.

“Mine’s in Florida. Betty,” Kevin clarifies, spotting Jughead’s confusion. “I know, right? There are representatives from at least four different high schools at this shindig, and I’m _still_ the only out gay guy. At least, I’m the only one I can find. This is the year I’m finally old enough to kiss someone at midnight, and I’m at this huge party, and look what happens! Am I an endangered species?”

“Betty’s in Florida?” Jughead asks blankly, having not really registered most of Kevin’s monologue.

“Yeah, they’re visiting her grandparents.” An idea strikes Kevin with such force that Jughead can practically see a light bulb forming over his head, and with a swift push, the glittery purple fedora is in Jughead’s hands. “Put this on.”

“No.”

“You’re no fun,” Kevin says, but mildly. “Fine, be a wet blanket.” A flash goes off in Jughead’s eye, and he blinks, temporarily blinded.

“What the hell, Kevin?”

“The occasion called for photographic evidence.”

Jughead’s smart enough to know that telling Kevin not to post his picture on social media will result in his picture immediately being posted on social media. Resisting the urge to do so is still difficult. He shoves the stupid tiny hat into a pocket and starts fidgeting with the elastic cord instead.

“Nope, we have to do it again. You look like a deer in headlights.”

“Gee, Kevin, I wonder why.”

“Smile this time,” Kevin orders, just before he squeezes the two of them together for a selfie.

Jughead does, barely.

“ _That_ one’s cute,” says Kevin firmly, putting his phone back in his pocket before Jughead gets a chance to look. “I’m gonna get a beer, you want one?”

“No thanks.”

The opportunity to meander off by himself, that’s what he wants, and that’s what he takes now. He passes a cooler that turns out to be full of sodas instead of beers, and swipes a Coke.

Jughead meanders into and out of a brief conversation with Dilton Doiley, which he exits as soon as humanly possible, and finally—mercifully—happens across an empty recliner. This he claims for his own for approximately three minutes, before a wildly passionate couple falls over one of the armrests and Jughead decides aimless wandering might be preferable after all.

And then he wanders right into someone.

“Whoops, sorry,” he mumbles.

“Oh, hey. Jughead!” It’s Ethel Muggs. “I didn’t know you’d be here. Come say hi to Raj.”

“I’m, uh…” Unable to think of an excuse not to say hi to Raj Patel, is what he is, especially since Raj is literally only two feet away.

“We stole all the guacamole,” Ethel adds.

“That’s only useful if you also stole all the tortilla chips.”

“We stole _most_ of the tortilla chips,” says Raj, holding out a bag.

Jughead shrugs and grabs a chip. “Good enough.”

“Actually, you’re just the person we wanted to see,” says Ethel. “Or, you know, you would be if we’d known you were here. Which you are, in fact. So, you are. Sorry,” she adds, flustered. “I’m not usually—I don’t usually drink.”

“You’ve had less than half a beer.” Raj dips a chip into a truly enormous tub of guacamole that’s perched on a nearby side table. “Anyway, we’re having an argument. We need an outsider’s opinion.”

“Good thing I’m such an outsider, then.” 

“And a movie buff,” Raj adds, which makes Jughead’s ears perk. 

Ethel nods, having somewhat collected herself. “Superior Kubrick film,” she says. “ _2001_ or _A Clockwork Orange_?

Jughead’s personal favorite is _Dr. Strangelove_ , but he pretends to think for a moment anyway.

“ _Barry Lyndon_.”

Ethel and Raj groan, in unison.

“Nobody has seen _Barry Lyndon_ ,” says Raj. “It’s effing four hours long.”

“I have. And it’s not even three and a half.” Jughead grabs another chip. “ _2001_ is not that much shorter.”

There follows a somewhat spirited debate on the precise meaning of the monolith that comes to an abrupt end with the predicted Dramatic Entrance of Jason and Cheryl Blossom. Truth be told, the drama is one hundred percent on Cheryl’s end; she explodes through Reggie Mantle’s front door in a haze of red feather boas and opera gloves, a ruby tiara atop her head and a ruby bracelet encircling her left arm.

“Are those real?” Ethel wonders aloud, and Jughead honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they were. 

“We have arrived,” Cheryl announces, with a broad smile. The announcement is somewhat unnecessary, since her entrance has caused all conversation to cease. She’s a weird void that vacuums up everything, even the white noise of Ryan Seacrest. 

Cheryl peels off her right glove and snaps her fingers. With perfect timing, Jason emerges from the darkness behind her, clad in his uniform of jeans and lettermen’s jacket. He’s balancing an entire crate of liquor on his shoulder. 

“Daddy’s finest maple blended whiskey. Jason, grace the Mantle kitchen with your presence.”

It is truly astonishing how quickly a crate of maple blended whiskey, whatever the hell that is, can turn a party from somewhat tolerable into…completely not. Various guys are shirtless now for no reason that Jughead can fathom. Ryan Seacrest comes back, louder than ever. Moose Mason and Chuck Clayton engage in a terrifying dance-off while a girl Jughead doesn’t know pukes in the kitchen sink. 

Jughead pulls out his phone to check the time and text Archie—surely they can leave as soon as midnight has passed?—and sees he has a very small handful of messages from Betty Cooper.

Three people run into him then, three people who smell very much like maple blended whiskey. One of them shouts something that Jughead can’t quite make out but is sure is a personal insult directed at him; the other two laugh. Suddenly the music seems even louder, exponentially louder, and the temperature exponentially hotter, and he knows he needs to get outside, _now_. He fights his way to the pile of coats that’s just inside the back door. Luckily, his has either fallen off the pile or been deliberately tossed aside, so it’s relatively easy to find. He shoves his arms in the sleeves as quickly as possible and fights through a few more drunken revelers, and finally, blissfully, he’s through the door and into the Mantles’ backyard. 

Despite the subfreezing temperatures, he’s far from the only person outside. But it is, at least, calmer out here—and darker—so it’s really no trouble at all to slip around the side of the house, unnoticed, while he buttons his jacket. Plus, he notices, most of the people out here are clearly looking for privacy. 

Jughead brushes a layer of snow from the retaining wall of a flowerbed and sits down. His ass is immediately frozen, but that’s of no consequence.

11:32.

 _Can we call your dad right after midnight?_ Send.

His left jacket pocket buzzes.

“Goddammit, Archie,” he mutters, reaching in there just to be sure—yep. Archie’s phone is definitively not on Archie’s person. “You’re really going to make me go back in there and look for you, huh?” 

With that, he prepares to wish Betty Cooper a happier New Year’s Eve than he’s currently having, and pulls up her texts.

_OMG, you’re at a party._

_How am I missing this?_

_I agree with Kevin, that’s a really cute photo._

Jughead Jones does not, of course, own touchscreen compatible gloves, so he’s forced to blow warm air onto his fingers before he’s able to respond.

And then, even when his fingers agree to move, he has no idea _how_ to respond.

_Really? You don’t think I’m about to murder Kevin?_

_No_ pops up almost immediately. _It’s cute._ Smiley face.

The next thing that pops up is a FaceTime request. Jughead accepts it immediately, without really thinking, but… _what?_

Betty Cooper’s face appears on his phone, bright and shining, the usual ponytail bobbing behind her. Her shoulders are mostly bare, with white camisole straps crossing them, and the top of the camisole nestled under her collarbones. This is all of Betty Cooper that he can see.

She makes a weird gesture, like she’s about to wave but for some reason has suddenly thought better of it. “Hi,” she says, simply.

“Hey. Um…” He looks from left to right, wondering if she expects him to carry the phone around so she can say hi to the entire party face-to-face, then looks back at the screen. Betty’s scowling at him now.

“Jeez, Jughead, are you outside? It must be freezing out there.”

“It is. Strangely, this is still preferable to being inside.”

“And dark. Go stand under a light or something, I can barely see you.” 

“Well, I’d hate to deny you _that_ privilege.”

Betty laughs, just a little bit.

“Are you…” He has to ask; she’s _really_ brightly lit. “Are you in a bathroom?”

“I am,” she says, nodding. “I have locked myself in the guest bathroom at my grandparents’ condo.” She turns the camera around to give him a panning shot, and he surmises she’s on the floor, leaning against a cabinet. “Thus the ultra-flattering fluorescent overhead lighting. Seriously, Jug, go find a streetlight or something. You look like a ghost alien.”

“How do you know that’s not the look I’m going for?” he quips (but he does stand up, and starts moving towards the nearest house light).

“Jughead.”

“Okay, okay.” Arriving under the light, he waves the phone around, trying to find an angle at which he doesn’t look like a ghost alien. “Just so you know, I have literally never used FaceTime before.” 

“I’m sure you can handle it.”

“Do I get to ask why you locked yourself in the guest bathroom at your grandparents’ condo?”

“Only if I get to ask why you’re wandering around outside in subfreezing temperatures.” A little smile appears at the corners of her mouth. “And I think I can guess the answer to that, so no.”

“Yeah, well.” Jughead shifts the phone around, trying to pull his coat sleeves over his fingers, thus giving Betty an excellent (if temporary) view of his nostrils. “Do I get to ask why we’re actually talking on the phone, and not using a text-based messaging service like normal members of our generation?”

“If I didn’t know you better, Jughead Jones, I would take that as an insult.”

 _It’s not_ , screams Jughead’s brain, but he keeps it disconnected from his mouth and says nothing.

“It’s just…” She takes a deep breath. “It’s been a weird week. I just—I needed to see a friendly face.”

“Sorry you got mine, then.”

“Jughead, _stop it_.” Her camera shakes a little, and suddenly, he gets the undeniable impression that she’s about to cry.

“Hey.” Shit. “Betty. _Betty_. I…”

“No, it’s okay. Sorry. I’m okay.” And then it’s like a weird sort of switch flips, and she actually _is_ okay.

“You…should not be the one apologizing here.”

“It’s fine,” Betty says. “I’m sorry. It’s really fine, Jug. I mean, my family is insane. But whose isn’t?”

He sincerely hopes this question is rhetorical. It seems to be, because Betty continues. 

“So how did Archie talk you into going to this thing, anyway? And how did Kevin talk you into taking a selfie at it?”

He adds a little extra deliberateness into his sigh. “A guilt trip and an ambush, respectively.”

Betty rewards him with a near-laugh. “And how was your Christmas? Anything good this year?”

“It was okay.” And now he has to focus on staying neutral. “Santa brought me a new laptop.”

“Really? Oh, my gosh, Jughead, that’s amazing.”

“It was unexpected, that's for sure.”

They continue on. Jughead might be surprised at how natural this feels, talking to Betty without their usual redheaded intermediary, except he’s noticed one rather crucial detail: she is definitely trying to steer their conversation away from herself. He gets a partial list of her Christmas haul (sweaters, books, the usual), but every other even slightly personal question gets deflected back so that it’s about him, somehow. And that part is horribly, horribly uncomfortable.

But this is what she seems to want—what she seems to need, even—so Jughead soldiers on, even if most of his answers are closer to non-answers, like they have to be. He hasn’t even told Archie one-tenth of what’s been going on lately, and Archie knows his family; Betty, he’s pretty sure, has never even met his parents. 

(And, if he’s being totally honest with himself, Betty’s conversational prowess is such that it would be easy, so easy, to confess all the worst details of his life to her. He wonders about that for a moment, and silently vows never to get on the wrong side of a curious Betty Cooper.)

(This is part of the reason for his discomfort, the glimpse he’s getting of how easily he could be comfortable with her.) 

“You know,” he says finally, during a lull, “Kevin didn’t even show me that picture.”

Betty chuckles. “He didn’t? Typical. I’ll send it to you after we—you know, when I don’t need the screen.”

“Okay.”

“I am kind of mad he didn’t talk you into the stupid party hat.”

“Well,” he says, “as Kevin so helpfully pointed out at the time, I am already constantly wearing a stupid hat.”

The corner of Betty’s mouth quirks upwards. “I like your hat.”

“No, you don’t. No one likes this hat.”

“Isn’t that why you wear it?” Betty asks. “To be cool and nonconformist?”

“It keeps my head warm.” 

“You wear it inside. And all summer.” Betty’s eyes narrow, and a devious grin spreads across her face. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this, Jughead Jones.”

Jughead rolls his eyes at her, though he’s fighting back a smirk. “There’s no mysterious hat origin story.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“There isn’t. I just…this one time, years ago, I needed a hat. So I bought a hat, this hat. Then I started wearing this hat. And then I somehow never stopped wearing this hat.”

He really does not want to psychoanalyze his hat.

“Well,” says Betty, seeming to sense that he’d like the subject to be closed, “you could always wear the party hat on top of it.”

The damn thing is still in his pocket, Jughead realizes. He puts the phone down. “Hang on a sec.” 

“What’s going on?” 

“There you go,” he says, lifting the phone over his head.

Betty moves the phone so it’s balanced on her knees, and claps. “Perfect. You look great, Jughead.”

There’s a huge rush of noise then, cheers and honking and shouts, from inside the house, and a much much fainter one from his phone. 

This is how Jughead Jones rings in the new year: grinning stupidly at Betty Cooper through FaceTime, with a stupid party hat on top of his stupid regular hat. He’s frozen to the bone. He somehow does not mind any of this. 

After the noise dies down, Betty gets pensive. “I should go,” she says. “In about two minutes, someone’s going to knock on this door, and I’m going to get scolded for being antisocial.”

“Yeah, I should find Archie.” He starts walking back towards the house, somehow unwilling to end the call.

“I’ll hang up so you can text—oh, god. Archie.” She sighs. “You have his phone, don’t you.” It’s not a question.

“It’s been in my coat pocket all night, for reasons completely unknown to me.”

“I’ll hang up anyway,” she says. “Night, Jughead. Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year,” he echoes.

“Oh, wait. It’s midnight.”

Betty plants a delicate kiss on her fingertips and blows it to him through the screen. And then she hangs up.

He pulls the stupid party hat off at once.

And then Jughead turns a corner and is confronted with the sight of Archie Andrews, pushed up against a wall by a girl he doesn’t recognize. He cannot quite see Archie’s face, which is very much covered by the girl’s face, but the hair. He recognizes the hair. He also recognizes the fact that there’s no not-awkward way out of this situation but for him to keep right on going. Once he’s a safe distance away, he calls Archie’s dad, hoping beyond hope that Archie will detach from the girl and find him before Fred arrives. 

In Jughead’s first stroke of luck in the new year, this is exactly what happens. 

“Good party?” Fred asks, half an hour later, from the relative warmth of his truck.

“Great,” says Archie.

Jughead shrugs. “I didn’t die.”

As promised, Betty has sent the picture. He waits until they’re back at the house and he’s alone in Archie’s room to look at it.

 _See? It’s cute_.

Jughead has never bothered spending a whole lot of time analyzing his own facial features. They are what they are, neither awful nor great; he can’t change them. In any case, there are a lot more important things on which to spend his mental energy than the question of whether or not anyone finds him attractive. 

It’s not a bad picture.

 _Fine, you win_ , he types. _I’m adorable_.

He contemplates this for a full fifteen seconds, then sucks it up (sucks _what_ up? He has no real idea) and hits send.

“It was a good party, huh, Jug?” asks Archie, returning from the bathroom.

“I’m going to stick with my previous assessment of ‘I didn’t die.’”

“Did you…” He falls strangely quiet after that, but Jughead knows what he means. 

“No.”

“I saw you talking to Ethel Muggs.”

Jughead rolls his eyes. “My assessment was that I didn’t die, Archie. Do you really think…”

“Just asking.” 

“Yeah. Maybe don’t.” 

They’re both silent for a moment.

“Well,” Archie says philosophically, as he burrows into his sheets, “there’s always next year.”

“There is that.” Jughead rolls over so he’s facing the wall. “Assuming we make it that far. Happy New Year, Archie.” 

“Happy New Year, Jug.”

* * * * * 

Betty wakes up with a smile on her face—not a big one, not a broad one. But it’s a smile nevertheless, and it’s connected to something inside her. Her lungs, maybe. Breathing seems a little easier this morning.

Her good mood does not go unnoticed. 

“The Florida sunshine does it again!” proclaims her grandfather, over a breakfast consisting of Florida orange juice and Florida grapefruit. “Sets everything right. Betty, how would you feel about accompanying me to the country club for eighteen holes this morning?” 

Betty doesn’t golf. In lieu of saying so, she takes another sip of orange juice. 

“Jim Murdoch was boasting about having the prettiest granddaughter just the other week, and I can’t let him get away with that, now, can I?” Grandpa Cooper gives her an exaggerated wink. 

Alice chips in at once. “That would be nice. It’ll be good exercise for you, Betty; you’ve been spending too much time cooped up inside.” 

Something deep inside Betty’s chest twitches, disconnecting her smile from its power source. 

“Great.” She pushes back from the table. “I’ll go get dressed.” 

Upstairs, she puts on seersucker shorts and a sleeveless cotton button-down, pulls her hair into its usual ponytail, brushes her teeth. She applies mascara and lip gloss and the tiniest bit of blush. She smiles at her reflection, and it smiles back at her. She looks nice. She looks like she could pass for the prettiest granddaughter at the country club. 

She has eight tiny red creases on her palms. 

Everything is fine.


	4. Winter/Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, look, this turned out longer than it was supposed to be (about 7,700 words). Featuring Archie/Jug friendship times, Coopers being Coopers, and much more Jellybean than I initially expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Diaphenia frequently goes ahead and makes my day.

Less than a week after school starts back up, Betty Cooper can confirm: her sister has _not_ broken up with Jason Blossom. She has merely learned to how to keep their relationship clandestine. This means it’s mostly confined to the corridors of Riverdale High, though Polly has also become more devious, more adept at concealing the times she and Jason meet in other locations.

Betty has not breathed a word of this to her parents, naturally. 

“I’m not seeing him, I swear,” Polly says at dinner one night. “We have one class together. Math. We don’t sit together and we don’t talk, I promise.”

“Maybe we should call Principal Weatherbee about getting you transferred into a different class,” muses Hal.

Betty watches Polly’s face closely for a reaction. A tiny flare of the nostrils is all that might betray her sister.

Alice nods. “That’s an idea worth pursuing.”

Polly protests that going so far as to make her switch classes is overkill, but her plea falls on deaf ears. She doesn’t protest very strongly, Betty thinks, and a little knot forms in her chest on her sister’s behalf.

“Polly,” Betty whispers later, into the slight crack her sister has left in her bedroom door. “Can we talk?”

After a moment, the door opens to admit her. She sits cross-legged on Polly’s bed while Polly takes the desk chair.

“Why’d you admit you and Jason have a class together?”

Polly shakes her head, a tiny smirk at the corner of her mouth. “Oh, Betty. You have a lot to learn.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t have trigonometry with Jason.”

“So you lied?”

Polly shrugs. “Soon it won’t be a lie. Mom will call, she’ll bully them into switching me into a different math class, and guess what? There are only two math classes I could be taking.”

Betty puts all the pieces together and concludes that this is a very convoluted way to get an extra hour or so with your boyfriend a few times a week.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Betts,” Polly sighs. “I know it sounds crazy. But you don’t know what it feels like.” 

“What _what_ feels like?”

Polly’s eyes widen. “Love.”

For no reason that Betty can think of, the way Polly enunciates this single word gives her the creeps. Intellectually, objectively, she can think of no reason that her sister should not be in love with Jason Blossom, or why Polly’s saying so should make her uncomfortable.

“It doesn’t matter if we can’t actually talk in class. It’s just his presence. It makes me feel…”

Betty waits for the revelation, but none comes.

“Good?” she suggests.

Polly bites her lower lip, slowly letting it slide out from under her teeth. Then she takes a deep breath and smiles.

“Calm.”

* * * * * 

January sweeps through with its usual frigid rage. Snow falls almost continuously, winds gust at gale force, Sweetwater River remains frozen over, and Jughead Jones spends way too much time outside for someone whose warmest winter coat is not technically all that warm. He’s starting to feel like his nose will never stop running and he’s hungry _all the time_ , like Kevin Keller keeps using the word “flabbergasted” to describe his feelings about the sheer number of chips and candy bars that emerge from Jughead’s backpack throughout the course of any given day.

Jughead’s mom has started a second job, or possibly a third; all her jobs are part-time and have inconsistent schedules, so he’s not really sure which one happens when. The additional income means there’s a decent amount of food at his house when she makes it to the store—not great food most of the time, still mostly frozen pizzas and Hamburger Helper and lima beans. But it’s there, and he eats that too. Sometimes she slips him a twenty before school, which is code for _I’m working through dinner, get takeout, make sure you’re at the bus stop for Jellybean_.

There is, thank goodness, a bus route that services Riverdale Elementary’s after-school program. The stop is a full half-mile from the house, but still. 

“I’m going for two minutes, eighteen seconds tonight, at power level nine,” Jellybean announces, as they struggle through the snow, accompanied by the smell of greasy Chinese food wafting from Jughead’s backpack.

“On the egg rolls or the lo mein?” They are on a quest to discover the ideal microwave time for each of their usual dishes. Jellybean has charts.

“Lo mein. No, wait.” She turns to look at him. “Did you get chicken or beef this time?”

Jughead smirks at his little sister. He’s been waiting for this. “Shrimp.”

“ _Why_ ,” she whines, drawing out the word for as long as possible.

“You like shrimp.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t established a baseline time for shrimp yet.”

None of the frozen pizzas or bags of lima beans or microwaved egg rolls seem to make any sort of difference; he’s still hungry all the time and he’s probably thinner than before, which even he would acknowledge is ludicrous, if anyone asked.

When they get to the house, they find their father asleep on the sofa. Jughead scrambles to round up at least some of the empty beer bottles, push them under the couch or something, before Jellybean runs to her room to get the microwave charts and sees how many there are. This probably isn’t necessary; he only sees three beer bottles today, but it’s not even six o’clock and three bottles seems like three too many.

F.P. wakes up just as Jughead is eyeing the last of the chow mein, and wanders into the kitchen, where he picks up a dirty glass from the countertop, fills it with water, and downs the whole thing in one disgusting, slurp-filled gulp.

“Smells good,” are his first words.

“Want some?” Jughead offers. F.P. shakes his head.

“Nah. Not hungry.”

Jughead is suddenly not hungry either.

“I’m going for a walk,” he announces. The dishes can wait. The dishes usually wait. 

“It’s cold out,” F.P. observes, as though this is news, as though it is not _always_ cold out in January, as though Jughead has not already walked several miles outside today.

(As though he feels some sort of fatherly responsibility to point out the weather.)

“Yes, Dad, I’m aware of that.”

Jughead has been taking a lot of walks lately.

The new year has brought an expansion of his father’s social-slash-professional circle. Against his will, Jughead now knows the names of almost a dozen large tattooed men in leather jackets. (And, in the interests of whatever perverse notion of gender equality this fulfills, he also knows the names of several variously sized tattooed women in leather jackets.) Their presence can be felt in the house long after they leave, through the closed door of Jughead’s bedroom, through headphones and loud music and louder movies. Lingering cigarette smoke is probably a factor there.

He’s found several interesting paths through the woods, including one that allows him to reach the Twilight in just under an hour—and that’s in the height of winter, so once all the snow has thawed and he’s not crossing frozen creek beds, it’ll probably take less than forty minutes. The city made him turn in his key to the projection booth at the end of the summer, but the _door_ to the projection booth isn’t hanging together so well; getting in would just be a question of kicking a Jughead-sized hole in it. His hesitancy to practice his nonexistent karate skills on the door has less to do with moral quibbles about the destruction of public property and more to do with the group of leather-clad people hanging out at the field’s edge.

It’s character-building, all this walking. Plus, it gives him time to think. He _likes_ thinking.

One day towards the end of January, as they stand up to leave the cafeteria after lunch, Betty Cooper fixes her eyes on him, squints, and tilts her head.

“Mustard?” he asks. He resists swiping at his face only because he’s holding a plastic tray of flabbergasting detritus.

(He hasn’t eaten anything with mustard on it.)

“No.”

“Then what?”

(Ketchup, crumbs, giant hole in his shirt, he’s bleeding profusely from an unknown orifice, he’s developed a second head?)

“I think you got taller,” she says, thoughtfully.

Huh.

“What, like since we sat down?”

Betty makes the noise he’s noticed her making a lot lately. It’s a little laugh that’s somewhere between a snort and a chuckle but is definitely neither one of those things, and he cannot figure out a single word to describe it.

“See you in English, Jug.”

She’s right, he realizes later. He’s only about two inches shorter than Archie now, instead of four.

And that’s all it is in the end. He’s not a black hole collapsing in on himself while consuming every object within his gravitational pull. He’s just having one cosmic-joke-level inconveniently timed growth spurt.

(Which Betty Cooper noticed before he did.)

* * * * * 

“Is there anything you’d like to tell me, Betty?”

Betty swallows, then arranges her face into a smile. “I’m cold?”

Dr. Nguyen smiles back. “We’ll get you out of this paper gown soon enough. Is there anything you’d like to discuss about your health? Physical or mental?”

There are approximately seventeen million things Betty would _not_ like to discuss about her physical or mental health. Not even with—or perhaps especially not with, she’s not sure which—Dr. Martha Nguyen, the pediatrician she’s seen for almost her whole life. At what point does she move on from the pediatrician, she wonders? But this another question she doesn’t feel like asking.

“Your mother has raised a few concerns with me.”

“She thinks I’m distracted,” Betty says automatically. 

“Do you feel distracted?” asks Dr. Nguyen. “More than usual?”

Betty shakes her head.

“I want you to know that anything you say to me is completely confidential. I won’t repeat it to anyone, not even your mother.”

Deep down, Betty does not believe this is entirely true, but she nods anyway. “I know.”

“It’s very normal to feel stress, even to feel overwhelmed sometimes,” continues Dr. Nguyen. “Especially at your age.”

“I don’t feel overwhelmed.”

This is, actually, the truth. Betty is on top of things. She’s getting straight As, as usual; she’s engaged in three school-affiliated extracurricular activities; she’s building up some savings from occasional babysitting; she makes sure to hang out with either Archie or Kevin for at least an hour every week. She updates her diary every night and makes time to read for pleasure. Sometimes she even practices the piano, although she hasn’t taken lessons for a few years. Still, it’s a _why not_ kind of thing, and it’s nice to just let her fingers do whatever for a while without having to think much about it.

Maybe she’s staring off into space more often than she used to, and maybe there have been a couple of times when she’s sat down to dinner and been completely unable to identify what she spent all day doing. Maybe sometimes food tastes like sawdust. Maybe she hasn’t exactly progressed beyond “cordial acquaintance” with anyone on the yearbook staff or the dance planning committee or in the tutoring center. Maybe she hasn’t blasted music and had a solo dance party in her room for a while. But cutting that out is just a sign of maturity, isn’t it?

The bottom line is, her life looks _great_ on paper. There is quantifiable evidence that she, Betty Cooper, is doing just fine.

She’s cut all of her fingernails very, very short. Her mother may have begun speculating that she’s biting her nails again (“I thought we cured you of that bad habit years ago, Betty”) but the crescents on her palms have faded to little white lines. 

“You’re juggling a lot of balls right now, according to your mother.”

 _I only feel overwhelmed when I stop juggling_ , Betty thinks. The more the merrier; the more balls she can keep in the air, the more her odd black feeling stays…sort of gray.

“It seems like a normal amount of balls to me,” she says, injecting an extra little bit of cheerfulness into her voice. Perhaps too much extra cheerfulness. Dr. Nguyen’s eyes narrow a little.

“Hmm,” she says, although Betty gets the impression she has a lot more to say on the matter. For now, though, the coast seems clear. “All right. Now. Are you sexually active, in any sense of the term?”

Oh, god, she’s going to get asked that now? “No. Definitely not.”

“Do you think you will be, in the near future?”

Betty’s mind flashes quickly and unavoidably to…not to Archie, but to Kevin, and the look on his face as he’d sat her down on her bed and launched into a description of Reggie Mantle’s New Year’s Eve party that began with _Better you hear this from me than someone else_ and ended with a soliloquy about Cheryl Blossom’s feather boas. The girl (of the “better you hear this from me” part, not Cheryl Blossom) goes to a different school, Kevin thinks, and as far as either he or Betty can tell it was a one-time thing. But Archie’s seemed a little distant lately.

Or maybe that’s her projecting. Who knows.

“Betty?”

“Hmm?” She snaps back to attention. “Oh. No. That’s—that’s definitely not in the cards right now.”

Dr. Nguyen hands her some pamphlets on safe sex anyway, because apparently, you just never know and it’s better to be prepared. Standard operating procedure and all that. (Betty agrees with this intellectually, but flushes bright red regardless.) Dr. Nguyen also hands her a prescription.

“You don’t have to fill this if you don’t want to,” she says. “But the option is there, if you think it will help you. I seem to remember that it did in the past.”

Betty blinks at the paper in her hand. “Adderall? I haven’t taken that since…I don’t know. Sixth grade?”

“As I said, it’s an option.”

An option.

“Okay.” Betty’s voice sounds very small to her.

“And let’s talk about some ways to reduce stress that don’t involve medication.”

They’ve barely shut the car doors and started up the engine when her mother turns and asks, “Did she give you a prescription for Adderall?”

“She said it’s an option.”

“An option.” Alice seems to consider this for a moment. “Give me the prescription. I’ll get it filled tomorrow.”

Betty sits up as straight as she can manage. “I don’t think I want to.”

“It’s hardly a very good option if it’s left unfilled. If you don’t fill it, you don’t have the option of taking it.”

Betty supposes this is true. She also supposes that a filled prescription will not, in the end, be optional.

She’s proven correct a week later when her mother not-so-subtly proposes that the best option is probably to just go ahead and try taking it, and if she doesn’t feel better in a couple of months, she can stop. They’re alone in the kitchen—actually, they’re alone in the house—and Betty has only come downstairs for a glass of water; she really, really is not in the mood to be handed a pill along with it.

“I feel fine now.” She’s been staring at a blank sheet of paper for almost an hour, trying to figure out how to start an essay for her history class. “Really, Mom. Everything is fine.” 

Alice sighs, tapping her fingers on the marble countertop momentarily before she gestures at the kitchen table. “Sit.”

Betty sits. Her mother remains standing.

“Do you know where your sister is right now?”

“No.” Betty crosses her arms over her chest, partly in defiance and partly to quash down the defiance. “I’m not her keeper.”

“I’m aware of that.” She seems to be fighting with herself over something. Finally, her shoulders slump, ever so slightly, for a nanosecond. “Your father took her to a doctor’s appointment.” 

Betty shrugs. “So?”

“A psychiatrist, Betty.” 

Wait, what? She wills her eyes not to widen, but they do anyway.

“There’s nothing wrong with seeking a little outside help sometimes,” Alice continues.

“No, I know. I know that.” Betty tries taking a deep breath; it accomplishes nothing. “But…Polly sees a psychiatrist?”

“She didn’t want you to know.”

The defiance, or whatever this new feeling is, seems to rise in Betty’s chest, burning brighter and higher until she can’t restrain herself.

“Is this because of Jason?”

“Elizabeth.”

“No.” Betty’s legs stand her up of their own volition; her eyebrows, she feels, may have shot right through the ceiling. “Are you and Dad sending Polly to a shrink just because you _don’t like her boyfriend_? Her ex-boyfriend,” she amends, hastily. Another thought occurs to her. “Is that why you were giving her those pills over Christmas break? Are you drugging Polly just because she’s dating a guy who—whose great-grandfather argued with ours a hundred years ago, or whenever it was?”

“Elizabeth.”

Her hands are all over the place now. “No. No, this is—”

“You don’t know what it is,” says Alice, firmly. “Sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit down, Mom!”

“Please.”

Despite the boiling feeling in Betty’s veins, she hears something vulnerable in her mother’s voice that makes her sit. She folds her arms back over her chest, feels a pinch in each upper arm, and realizes she’s got a stranglehold on her own biceps. 

“Your father and I have been concerned about Jason Blossom, yes.”

“Understatement,” Betty mutters, and Alice holds up a forefinger.

“Betty,” she says, slowly, “I’m sure you noticed how erratic your sister’s behavior was at the end of last year. Don’t deny that, however much you want to be on her side.” 

Betty’s blood boils even hotter, but she remains silent.

(Her mother, she hates to admit, does have a point with that one.) 

“There was an incident. Before Christmas.”

“An incident.” She takes a short, determined breath and huffs it out. “What kind of incident?”

Alice waves her hand, obviously intending to wave off the particulars. “The police were called. And Jason Blossom was involved, I need hardly add.” 

There’s a sudden loud roaring in Betty’s ears that is, paradoxically, completely silent.

“We managed to keep charges from being pressed,” Alice continues, the absolute master of passive voice. “But your father and I thought, well...” She pauses, takes a deep breath. “You should know, Betty, that this isn’t the first time that Polly’s behaviors have warranted an intervention.”

“An intervention,” Betty says slowly. “What kind of intervention?”

“The psychiatrist. We kept it from you when it happened before. Two years ago, when she started high school. She got very depressed for a while, Betty, and it had nothing to do with boys. We saw signs of—well.”

Betty is now, in ascending order: uncomfortably hot; possibly going to have a heart attack; and the most confused she’s ever been in her life.

Alice reaches across the table and tugs gently at her shirt cuff, smoothing it over her wrist. “Please don’t tell her I told you anything, darling.”

“Don’t—don’t _tell_ her?”

“She didn’t want you to know. She doesn’t want to disappoint you.”

For the first time, Betty makes solid eye contact with her mother, and is shocked to see a single tear welling in the corner of her eye.

Betty Cooper has _never_ seen her mother cry.

“Mom.” Her voice softens somewhat—or no, it’s cracking. Her voice is cracking. “Polly’s my sister. So she has depression. So she made a mistake, or maybe a few mistakes. I’m going to love her no matter what.”

 _Why would Polly ever think otherwise?_ she screams, but only inside her head. _Because of depression?_

“I know you are. And that’s very good of you.” Alice stands, walks to the counter, finishes pouring the glass of water Betty came down here for in the first place, and sets it in front of her.

With a pill.

“Take your Adderall,” she says, her features masklike once more, and Betty hears _The pressure is all on you, now, Elizabeth_. 

She puts the pill into her mouth, takes a sip of water, and swallows before going back to her bedroom.

She hears an echo of Polly insisting _Whatever Mom and Dad have told you, it’s a lie_ outside an airplane restroom.

Her nails may be cut to the quick, but when she unfurls her hand after spitting the Adderall into it, she finds four tiny red crescents carved into her palm.

At three in the morning, when she’s sure everyone else is asleep, Betty sneaks downstairs into her parents’ office. The file cabinets are all locked, but she knows which desk drawer the keys are in. The desk drawer, too, is locked—but this lock is simple, and she thinks she can pick it. 

“Thank you, Nancy Drew,” she mutters, as her bobby pin does its thing and the drawer slides open. (In fact, the internet taught her how to do this, but Nancy Drew feels like the appropriate patron saint to invoke.)

Betty knows going through her sister’s medical records is a gross violation of privacy, but she needs to know the truth. _I’m not making any judgments_ , she tells herself. _I’m just collecting evidence_. 

“Bingo,” she whispers.

Alice Cooper’s mania for tidiness has paid off handsomely. Unfortunately, what it’s paying Betty right now is a handful of insurance statements, indisputable proof that this is not the first time Polly has seen a psychiatrist. 

She slides the records back into place, replaces the file cabinet keys, and just kind of has to hope that her parents will think they forgot to lock the desk drawer, because neither Nancy Drew nor the internet have ever told her how you lock something with a bobby pin.

* * * * * 

“I feel like I haven’t seen you at all lately, man.”

Jughead automatically raises an eyebrow at the appendage of “man,” then slams his locker shut and turns to Archie. “Where exactly do you think I’ve been?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m saying I feel like I haven’t seen you.”

Jughead affixes the padlock to his locker and spins the dial, and the two of them set off down the hall towards biology class.

“I’ve been right here.” Or possibly walking through the woods, or maybe at Pop’s, but whatever. The point is, there are not that many places he goes. He is also reachable by phone or email.

“Jug.”

“Sorry.” He sighs—at himself more than Archie—and straightens up. 

Jughead is aware of the fact that at least three-quarters of any plans they make in advance are initiated by Archie, but generally chooses to believe it isn’t a big deal. It makes sense for things to be this way. Archie’s social and athletic calendars are inevitably busier than his, and there are only so many times you want to hear _sorry, can’t that day_. 

“I haven’t even seen your new house,” Archie points out. “Are you ever going to invite me over?” 

There are of course very good reasons not to invite Archie over, which Jughead sincerely hopes he never has to explain in full. 

“It’s kind of a shithole,” he mutters. “And it’s way the hell out.” 

A brief, pained look crosses Archie's face. “Jug, you know I don’t care about—”

“Got plans this weekend?” Jughead asks, just a little too loudly. “We could hit up the Bijou. Double feature on Saturday. _Dirty Harry_ and _Sudden Impact_.”

Archie nods, and Jughead watches his face closely, realizing he’s been holding his breath only when it’s clear Archie’s willing to accept the change of subject. 

“That sounds good.”

“I’ll have to…” Jughead doesn’t bother with the “check the time,” not because he already knows exactly when the double feature starts (although he does) but because Archie is suddenly jogging in the opposite direction, back towards their lockers.

“Catch up with you in a minute, Jug, okay?”

Jughead assumes this question does not require a response, so in lieu of giving one, he leans against the wall outside their classroom and watches.

“Where’s he going?” asks a familiar voice.

“No idea.” Jughead keeps his focus on Archie. He’s seen Betty already today, her ponytail and pale blue sweater and the light pink lip gloss she reapplied after lunch, and doesn’t really need to look again—not even if she smells like chocolate. Which she does right now, in fact, but that’s an incidental detail.

They watch Archie approach Cricket O’Dell and engage her in a brief conversation. Cricket glances at her feet, a smile blossoming, and then Archie grins broadly and turns the same color as his hair.

 _Oh, no_ , flashes through Jughead’s mind, and then _abort abort abort_ , and now he turns his eyes to Betty—just his eyes, not his head. He doesn’t want her to know he’s watching her as Archie approaches, and that’s more for her sake than his. Somewhere in the world, a cogently expressed version of this feeling exists.

(He doesn’t want Betty to know that he knows she has feelings for Archie? Or he doesn’t want to watch her actively having those feelings in front of him? Something like that.)

(He doesn’t want to see Betty’s feelings hurt.) 

Archie bounds the last few steps before falling into place just behind them, the apex in their triangle. He’s still pink around the edges, but clearly pleased with himself.

“What was that?” Betty asks Archie, despite Jughead’s fervent prayers that she won’t. It’s obvious what that was. Jughead knows what that was, and from the very slight clench in Betty’s jaw (he is not staring at Betty, he’s not) it’s pretty clear she knows what that was, and…well, he understands the impulse to rip off emotional Band-Aids, he supposes.

Betty Cooper has the world’s worst poker face.

“I asked Cricket to go to the Valentine’s dance with me, and she said yes.”

Betty’s lower lip gives a weird little twitch, maybe half of a tremble, and her posture becomes slightly less excellent than usual. She blinks three times in rapid succession.

Suddenly Jughead finds very strange words coming out of his mouth—well, the words themselves are not strange, but the fact that they’re coming out of his mouth is very odd indeed. These words are “I thought she was dating Reggie Mantle.”

(Is this what he’ll do for Betty Cooper? Go all Hedda Hopper to divert Archie’s attention from her?)

“They went to the winter ball together, but that was kind of it,” says Archie, absently, as they walk into the classroom.

Betty blinks a fourth time, and then—just like Jughead saw during the New Year’s Eve video chat that for some reason neither of them have acknowledged ever happened—a switch flicks and she’s all smiles.

“You’ll have a great time with Cricket,” she says. “Hey, does that mean you’re actually going to dance at this dance?”

Archie shrugs. “Yeah. I mean, I guess I have to dance with Cricket, huh?”

“Yeah, you probably should.” Betty presses her lips together, hard, bracing herself. “I mean, you at least have to dance a couple of songs with your date.”

There follows an extraordinarily long, extraordinarily painful pause during which Archie fails to notice the giant hint that’s tap dancing right in front of him and Jughead discovers that his masochistic streak does not extend so far as to enable him to say _Hey, don’t forget to save one for Betty_. He wishes he could say those words, for her sake. But the likelihood of them coming out right now is about the same as the likelihood that he’ll ask her to the dance himself. Thank god the teacher starts talking and they're all relieved of the obligation to think of the next thing to say.

Jughead sneaks a few glances at Betty during class. Her note-taking typically borders on obsessive, especially during English; today, though, she’s doodling idly in the margins of her notebook.

As they exit the classroom, Betty pulls an open Twix wrapper from her bag, breaks the uneaten stick in two. Then she passes Jughead the slightly bigger half, shoves the smaller half into her own mouth, and disappears into the crowd without comment or backwards glance.

The rest of the week passes. No one asks Jughead if he’s bringing a date to the Valentine’s dance. No one even asks if he’s coming to the dance at all; it seems to be taken for granted that he’s not. That this assumption is accurate is not really the point.

On Saturday, he and Archie hit up the Bijou for the _Dirty Harry_ double feature. Flurries have been falling since last night, and as they leave the theater at twilight, freshly blanketed downtown Riverdale looks especially idyllic. Clean. Innocent. Like a snow globe.

They walk the mile or so back to Archie’s house, stomping fresh footprints in the snow, trading increasingly gravelly renditions of “go ahead, make my day” back and forth until they arrive in front of Archie’s garage, both coughing from the effort of imitating Clint Eastwood when it’s thirty degrees and snowing. Thirty degrees and snowing feels pretty warm, at this point.

“Hey,” wheezes Archie, leaning against the garage’s frame, “want to see what my dad and I set up the other week?”

Jughead shrugs one shoulder, coughs, and chokes out one last “Go ahead, make my day.”

This does not, somehow, elicit one last chuckle. “Isn’t it great?” Archie says, turning on the light.

“You made your garage—” Jughead shakes his head. His best friend is totally, utterly thrilled, and Jughead is this close, _this close_ , to literally head-desking; the only thing stopping him is the total lack of desk. 

“A weight room, yeah. Or, you know, at least we have the bench and some dumbbells. And we set up this punching bag.”

“Why?” Jughead keeps his voice cautious. “Because of…football?” It isn’t football season. It isn’t even football practice season.

“Not just football.” Archie’s chest puffs out just slightly. “I know what I’m doing this summer. I’m going to work for my dad.”

“And that requires a weight room because…” The words trail off as he realizes what this means: Archie has summer plans = less time to hang out.

“Because construction requires a lot of upper body strength.” Archie’s tone indicates he thinks the insight is obvious, and, Jughead supposes, it is.

“As long as you’re not going full jock on me, Arch,” he says, clasping a hand to his chest. “I don’t think my heart could handle it.”

Archie chuckles. Then his eyes light up, and Jughead knows, _knows_ what’s coming and is powerless to stop it.

“You can come over and lift weights with me!”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jughead says baldly, but when he meets Archie’s eyes it’s clear the offer was sincere. He drops his eyes to the floor, and his snow-covered boots, and briefly wonders how they got to here. _Lamentation for a Lost Childhood_ , he thinks. It’s a great title for that poem he’s supposed to be writing for English class but hasn’t started yet.

Then he remembers how often tattooed men in leather jackets are hanging around his house, and how large these men generally are, and how they’re probably going to be hanging around even more once the weather gets better, and suddenly the idea of being…what, even? _Jacked_ is self-evidently an impossibility, but stronger. Stronger might not be such a bad idea.

“Jughead?”

He looks up, and sees Archie wearing his best, most hopeful _Let’s be friends, Jughead!_ face, the one he’s used since he was four years old and their dads left them to play in the dirt, vaguely unsupervised, at construction sites. It’s a face that’s preceded countless shenanigans over the years, as well as arguments over who thought up each particular shenanigan, depending on the “how much fun did we have/did we get in trouble for it” ratio.

It’s a face, Jughead realizes, that he hasn’t seen in a very long time.

He tilts his head one way, then the other, and squints one eye half-shut.

No matter which perspective he takes, the weight bench still looks like a goddamned football thing.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I’ll think about it.”

Archie beams.

He starts his lengthy walk home after that, passing the Coopers’ house before he turns up Elm, and sees Polly Cooper making snow angels in the front yard.

 _What the hell?_ , Jughead thinks, and then, _That kind of looks like fun_.

* * * * *

At least being a member of the dance planning committee gives her something to do for three hours. Polly’s home with a cold—possibly even a legitimate cold; she’s been doing a lot of coughing—so there’s no one to pretend to babysit. Lord knows she isn’t getting asked to dance.

“Betty, why don’t you be in charge of…hmm. Water.” Ginger Lopez looks pleased with this decision, and immediately disappears into the crowd before Betty can protest.

There’s a text on her phone from Kevin, received last night. _Please don’t kill me but I’ve been chatting with this really cute guy online and he’s in Greendale and OMG I know right before Valentine’s Day is the worst possible time for a first date but would you kill me if I skipped the dance?_

Of course she won’t kill Kevin. She’s thrilled for Kevin. It’s just…it doesn’t make for the most exciting evening, fixing little plastic cups of ice water.

Archie dances with Cricket O’Dell four times. Then he swaps partners with Moose Mason, and goes two songs with Midge Klump. Then it’s two more with Cricket. Then Betty realizes her left palm is starting to sting, and forces herself to stop counting. Then Cricket comes over to get water. Betty waits for Archie, too, but he’s chatting with one of the chaperones, whom she recognizes as the new music teacher. 

“Ooh, Betty, I love your dress,” enthuses Cricket, and Betty can’t even be mad at her. They are, after all, on the yearbook committee together. 

“Thanks!” She smiles brightly. “I love yours. And your shoes.”

“Thanks!”

* * * * *

“This is not a date,” Jellybean explains, the patience in her voice now wearing thin.

“I’m paying for that milkshake you’re drinking.”

“Jughead.”

“And you gave me a card with a heart on it this morning.”

She huffs. “All it said was that you should download my new Spotify playlist.”

“The playlist that is entirely love songs,” he points out, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Yeah, but something like eighty percent of all the songs in existence are love songs!” she cries, her exasperation finally breaking through. “Plus, it’s almost Valentine’s Day. Love songs are seasonally appropriate.”

“‘Seasonally appropriate’?”

“It doesn’t mean _you’re_ my valentine.”

Jughead shrugs and steals one of her onion rings. It’s ten minutes before their mom’s picking them up, the onion rings will be cold by then, and he does not intend to let them go to waste. “This is a date.”

“It’s not a date,” Jellybean retorts. “And stop eating my onion rings.”

“People share food on dates, kid.”

“ _Jughead!_ ”

(He spends all night half-waiting for the inevitable Betty x some combination of Archie or Kevin selfie to arrive, but it never does.)

* * * * *

Halfway home from the dance, Betty screws up her courage and just comes out with it.

“Dad,” she says, focusing on a particular speck of dust on the dashboard, “am I even _allowed_ to date?”

“Why?” Hal’s voice is immediately suspicious. “Who’s asking you?”

“Well…” She swallows. “No one right now. But in theory.”

“In theory, are you allowed to date?”

Betty nods.

“Of course you are, sweetie,” he says, moving his right hand from the wheel to cover her left.

“Okay.”

Hal gives her hand a comforting squeeze before putting his hand back on the steering wheel. They drive three blocks in silence.

“As long as your mother and I meet the boy first,” he adds. “We’d like to approve of him first.”

There it is.

“In fact, that’s a requirement.”

Betty leans her head against the window. It’s cold, but she doesn’t much care. She trudges upstairs, hoping beyond hope the throb in her temple isn’t going to turn into a full-blown headache. She is, after all, very well hydrated right now. 

She showers off the dance, goes downstairs and makes herself a cup of chamomile tea, updates her diary, reads for a little while, and is just getting into bed when her phone buzzes. 

_DATE WAS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!_ That’s cute. But when Kevin follows up with three eggplant emojis, she feels her face twist into what she imagines is the most horrified expression she’s ever made.

 _TMI, Kev_ , she types back.

Kevin responds with six eggplant emojis and then _Betty I have to tell you everything._

_Pop’s tomorrow?_

_Can’t tomorrow, seeing him again_ , eggplant eggplant eggplant, winky face.

Betty shakes her head lightly at the phone, and mutters, “Good for you, Kev.” 

She’s left her bedroom curtains open just a crack, waiting to wave goodnight to Archie. But when he finally gets home a full three hours after she herself has returned, he flings himself backwards onto his bed, still in his suit, without a care in the world or a glance in her direction. 

Her bedroom door creaks open, and Polly creeps in.

“Betty? How was the dance?”

She shrugs. “It was fine.” She has the distinct impression that Polly isn’t really here to talk about the dance.

“Just to let you know…” Polly drops her voice, and her eyes widen to cartoonish proportions. “I need you to cover for us tomorrow morning.”

“Us?”

Jason Blossom creeps in behind Polly, and Betty almost chokes on nothing. 

“Jason, what are you doing here?” It takes every ounce of control she has to whisper instead of screeching the words at the top of her lungs. “Seriously. Were you just in Polly’s _room_?”

“He’s been here all day,” Polly says, with a maddeningly casual shrug. “He climbed in my window this morning. Anyway, I told Mom and Dad I feel better, and that I’m going to a community service project with the River Vixens. We’re doing trash pickup by Sweetwater River.”

“So you lied about being sick.” This is a feeble straw to clutch at, Betty knows. But her heart’s fallen straight past her stomach and is somewhere around her feet right now. 

“I just need you to back me up on this. Please, Betty. I told them it’s a really secluded spot. They’ll never come looking for me there.”

“I…” Betty’s heart settles in the pit of her stomach. Then she remembers what her father said about dating in the car on the way home, and clenches her jaw. “Okay. Fine. I’ll cover for you if they ask. But I’m not—I am _not_ helping you sneak him out.”

Polly wraps her in a hug. “You’re the best sister,” she whispers, which puts Betty’s heart more or less back in its proper place. Granted, it’s still beating about six times faster than normal as the two of them slip silently from her room.

There are eight tiny red creases in her palms, and she thinks: _I have to get out of here_.

When she wakes up the next morning (thankfully, not to the sound of her parents murdering Jason Blossom), she cuts her fingernails very, very short and makes a decision about her future. 

The bulk of Betty’s Sunday is spent with hot chocolate and Sleuthster. She’s going to figure out what out-of-town-summer-opportunity-so-good-her-parents-can’t-possibly-say-no might exist. She’s going to find something amazing. Something that will look better on her college applications than cheerleading.

Something that will even—dare she let herself imagine it?—let her reinvent herself, if only temporarily. _I’m Betty Cooper_ , she’ll say, shaking hands with a new acquaintance, and this new acquaintance will have absolutely no idea what “Betty Cooper” is supposed to mean.

Mid-afternoon, she decides to stretch her legs for a bit. She wraps herself up (it’s warmed up a little, but not that much) and pops in her earbuds. 

“I’m going for a walk!” she yells to whoever’s in the house, but leaves without waiting for a response. 

Left or right? She usually turns right, but today seems like a left day. 

Forty minutes later, she arrives at the end of her loop. Fred Andrews is on his front porch with coffee and a newspaper. She waves at him, and he waves back. She takes out her earbuds. 

“Hi, Mr. Andrews.” 

“Hi, Betty,” he replies. He jerks his head towards the backyard. “Boys are in the garage.” 

“I’ll go say hi,” she tells him with a smile, even though seeing Archie was not on her agenda for today and she can’t imagine why he and Jughead would be hanging out in the garage, of all places. 

The first things she registers when she turns the corner into the backyard are, in order: the garage door is open, a space heater is plugged in, and Jughead Jones is reclined on a weight bench, doing overhead presses. With what appear to be very small hand weights, but still. 

_I have to get out of here_ , she thinks; _I am living in a weird parallel universe._

“Jughead?” she calls. “Are you working out?” 

“I’m wounded, Betty,” he calls back, not missing a beat. “I thought you knew me better than that.” 

Archie emerges from the shadows of the garage, sweating through a baggy sweatshirt, and rolls his eyes. Boxing gloves cover both hands, and he wipes his brow with his shoulder. “Take a closer look, Betts.” 

She does. 

Jughead is overhead pressing a copy of _Infinite Jest_ , which he is also reading. 

“In my defense,” he says, “this does weigh about ten pounds.” 

Betty can’t help it. She laughs.

* * * * *

It would be normal, Jughead supposes, to get excited about spring break. He isn’t. Not that he’ll miss the rigamarole of school—he won’t—but it’s somewhere to go, something to do. His mom has decided to take Jellybean to Toledo to see his grandparents; they haven’t been in years.

He could go too, of course, even though he’s not close to his mom’s family. The geographical distance may be responsible for such infrequent visits, but there’s an emotional distance as well. Once he got out of diapers, his grandparents started harboring a none-too-secret fear that Forsythe Pendleton Jones III would end up just like Forsythe Pendleton Jones II: a ne’er-do-well who goes about Ohio on a motorcycle, knocking up innocent high school girls. An unfortunate incident involving matches and an elementary school did not exactly assuage this fear. 

(They have always adored Jellybean, which makes perfect sense. He doesn’t hold any grudges over that.) 

Jughead stays home.

When he emerges from his bedroom late Monday morning, laptop stashed in his backpack, there are seven Southside Serpents in the kitchen. One is his father. Five are large tattooed men in leather jackets that he’s seen before.

“Have you met Joaquin?” asks F.P., gesturing at the seventh. “Joaquin, Jughead. My son.”

Joaquin nods in acknowledgement, and Jughead makes the mistake of actually looking at him.

Jughead had been planning to fight his way through to the pantry, grab a Pop Tart or something on his way out, but instead he heads straight for the door without stopping.

He hears F.P. chuckle as he crosses the threshold. “Kid likes to think he’s too good for us.”

Jughead doesn’t look back.

Joaquin is fucking _his age_. Maybe—maybe—he’s a year or two older. And Jughead thinks: _I have to get out of here_.

He doesn’t slow down until he’s all the way to Pop’s, where he pushes the door open to find Betty and Archie on opposite sides of a booth, leaning slightly forward and looking into each other’s eyes, milkshake straws between their smiling lips. A weird glow of sunlight is coming through the window behind them and for a second he could swear they’re enveloped in the same giant, golden halo; that this, finally, is _it_.

Of course he’s walked into their moment. 

For an instant, he considers trying to escape unnoticed, but Pop Tate calls “You’re here early, Jughead!” from the far end of the counter, and, well. Both Archie and Betty look up, and Jughead finds himself strangely frozen in place.

But, miracle of miracles: Betty’s face breaks into a broad, happy smile. Archie’s does, too; they both wave him over, and suddenly there he is, being enthusiastically welcomed to their table.

“C’mere, sit,” Betty says, patting the seat next to her as she scoots over to give him room.

Cautiously—he’s still not entirely sure this isn’t a continuation of the morning’s psychological horror movie aspects—Jughead slides in and sees that the table is almost entirely covered in computer printouts.

“I was just telling Archie about all these amazing summer internship opportunities for high school students that I’ve found over the last month.”

“Summer internships,” he repeats. “Like...out-of-town internships?” He can’t imagine there are any internship opportunities in Riverdale other than maybe the mayor’s office, and Betty’s got a solid two dozen options on the table. 

“Yeah. Look at this one.” She reaches over to grab a piece of paper, and her hand brushes against his. “Most of them are course credit only, but this one actually pays a little, _and_ it provides room and board. It’s with an independent publisher.”

“That’s…cool.” 

“It’s definitely my first choice so far, but it’s super competitive. So I don’t know. I don’t want to get my hopes too far up.”

“You’re so smart, Betts, I’m sure you’ll get whatever internship you want,” Archie interjects.

Jughead looks up at her. Their eyes lock, and he finds he’s run out of adjectives.

“I just feel like I want to get out of Riverdale for the summer, you know?”

(His best friend is an idiot.)

Jughead nods.

He does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like every other author, I very much appreciate comments, kudos, etc. Seriously, though: this fic has been getting not just comments, but some really heartfelt and personal comments, and I am so grateful to know that this story is connecting with people. Thanks for sticking with me so far!
> 
> (I'm also stillscape on tumblr. I don't post a lot, but come say hi! I always love talking about writing and head canon and such)


	5. Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guys, at the end of this chapter, we have officially reached the point at which I intended to start this fic in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to diaphenia, for whom I totally forgot this chapter needed a trigger warning for foods she finds upsetting. 
> 
> Comments are always appreciated (seriously, you guys don't even know).

There’s a sick sort of irony to the fact that F.P. Jones II can disappear from his family for days or sometimes even weeks on end without a second thought, doing god only knows what—but when his wife plans and takes a totally normal six-day trip to visit her parents without him, he falls apart immediately upon her return. Or, he falls apart in a different way than normal. Since spring break ended, F.P. has been…different. This F.P. is moody—well, moodier—and morose and, in the moments when his social and professional circle is absent, keeps trying to get his children to hang out with him.

Which is how they have come to this moment: him and Jellybean, held moderately hostage in the living room by F.P. Jones II, family man. 

“You want a beer?”

Make that F.P. Jones II, “family man.”

“No, Dad, I don’t want a beer.” Jughead’s crouched by the television with a handful of cables, having tried and failed to accomplish something he knew was impossible from the outset. “There’s no way this is going to work. The TV’s way too old; there’s no way I can connect the laptop to it.”

“I was kidding anyway.”

There’s a pop and a hiss, and then a squeak of springs as F.P. collapses on the ancient sofa, beer in hand. He has been, by Jughead’s estimation, almost entirely sober for the past couple of days. He’s just morose.

“So we can’t watch?”

“We can watch.” Jughead stands up, with some difficulty; there’s nothing impeding him, but gravity feels awfully heavy at the moment. “We just have to watch on my laptop.”

(His laptop, which currently contains a very important, very scary document that he may or may not work up the courage to send in.)

“Is that a big deal?”

“No,” Jughead sighs, shaking his head. It is, but only because he has to put the laptop on the coffee table and sit _right next_ to his father (or make Jellybean sit right next to him); if he’d been able to hook up the computer to the TV, they both could have sat a much safer distance away. The big deal part of the enterprise has already happened: namely, his father, bleary-eyed, waking him in the middle of the night to reminisce about the ghosts of Christmas past and Jughead’s preschool graduation and Jellybean’s birth—about which Jughead remembers almost nothing, having been only five years old at the time.

(The big deal is that he worked up the nerve to talk to his English teacher about this document, and as he stood there, muttering nervous gibberish, she lit up like a Christmas tree and started throwing around the word “potential” again.)

“Dibs on the floor,” calls Jellybean, plopping down in front of the couch.

F.P.’s announcement that there were home movies, honest to god Jones family home movies, on an old external hard drive in a shoebox in a closet—and that he had found said external hard drive—is about the equivalent of that Argentine museum finding Fritz Lang’s original cut of _Metropolis_. The fact that the hard drive is still functional is an equally improbable occurrence. The fact that all of the files have indecipherable computer-generated titles and identical “modified on” dates is…unsurprising.

(Nothing will come of the document or the “potential,” in the end, and this will be unsurprising as well.)

Somewhere, deep in the recesses of Jughead’s memory, are faded recollections of his father and a digital camera. A digital camera that also took movies, apparently.

“I guess we’ll just start at the beginning,” he mutters, shooting a look back at his father.

F.P. lifts his eyebrows and shrugs. Jughead double-clicks the first file, and they begin.

A few videos in, it’s clear that nothing is in any sort of order. So far they’ve seen a slow pan over a Thanksgiving table with no one sitting at it, twenty seconds of out-of-focus feet, and some sort of endless hell-scape of a kindergarten choral performance, a five-minute medley ending in “The Wheels on the Bus,” about which the less said the better.

“That’s it,” declares Jellybean, standing up and dusting herself off. “This is boring. I’ll be in my room. Call me when I show up.”

The next video contains a four-year-old Archie Andrews running through a lawn sprinkler in his backyard, wearing only his underwear, which Jughead fully intends to tag for future reference (and possibly blackmail).

“Where am I in this one?” he wonders aloud, as Fred Andrews wanders into and out of the frame.

He’s not really expecting an answer, but F.P. chuckles. “Hiding behind me, if I recall correctly.”

“Hiding?”

“You were terrified of the sprinkler. Hated getting wet.”

“I don’t remember that.”

Sure enough, a few moments later, Archie runs over and drags a four-year-old Jughead out from behind the camera. The boys only make it a few steps forward towards the sprinkler before Jughead starts crying, at which point the video ends.

“Well, that wasn’t my finest moment,” remarks fifteen-year-old Jughead, and F.P. chuckles again.

They watch a few more clips, also out of chronological order but all seemingly taken the years Jughead was four and five, just before Jellybean was born. They’re the kinds of videos any family might have taken of their kid: he’s trying out a bike with training wheels, he’s going through an Easter basket, that kind of thing. It’s clear they’ve never had a lot of money, but this isn’t surprising to Jughead; the surprising thing is how freaking _happy_ everyone looks all the time. Well, all of the time that lawn sprinklers aren’t involved.

“We played catch?” His mom must have taken this one, because there’s F.P., baseball glove on hand. “I don’t remember ever playing catch.”

“‘Course we did.” F.P. sounds vaguely offended. “Who doesn’t play catch with their son?”

The next clip shows five-year-old Jughead curled up in an adult-sized armchair, totally immersed in a book, which is more the early childhood he remembers.

“Look at that,” says the F.P. behind the camera, his tone soft and—and possibly a little bit awed. “Look at that kid. He’s been like that for an hour.”

“When did you learn to read?” asks the F.P. on the couch. “I can’t remember.”

Jughead shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t remember not knowing how to read.”

“Hasn’t moved except to turn the pages,” says the F.P. on the video. “Unbelievable. This book doesn’t even have pictures.” There’s a long pause, during which absolutely nothing happens except for the turning of a page, and then F.P.’s voice says, simply, “Amazing.”

Present-day Jughead slides a glance to his left, and finds a wry little twist on his present-day father’s mouth. F.P. raises an eyebrow.

“Still are, kid,” he says, and the back of Jughead’s neck comes precipitously close to catching on fire.

Of course, once the videos are over, F.P. steps out to “get some air” and doesn’t come back for two days.

* * * * *

Betty’s just applying her mascara when she hears a light tap at her bedroom door.

“It’s me,” says Polly’s voice.

“Come in.”

Polly enters, looking pretty in pink. Pretty and, Betty thinks, mostly normal and happy. She’s wearing a soft floral print and conservative skirt tonight, a headband behind her ears, the lightest of her lipsticks. It’s a familiar look, and maybe that’s why it’s comforting to see; but also, it undeniably suits her. 

“Hey,” Polly says. “Oh—oh, no, you’re wearing pink too. Should I change?”

“No. Who cares if we’re wearing the same color?”

Polly raises an eyebrow. “Mom,” they say, in unison. They both laugh a little, but Betty isn’t sure whether anything is actually funny, and suspects Polly doesn’t know either.

“I’ll get a different sweater,” Betty says.

“No, don’t. It’s your birthday dinner, you should wear what you want.”

“Polly.” She’s already out of her pale pink cardigan and picking up an ivory one instead. “This is fine. Really.”

“Okay. Well…” Looking almost shy, Polly hands Betty a small box she’s had held behind her back; given the size and shape, it almost certainly contains some kind of jewelry. “I wanted to give you this before we go. Happy birthday.”

“Aw, Polly.”

“Open it now,” Polly urges, her eyes wide.

Betty rips the paper open and takes off the lid to find a tiny gold key dangling from a delicate gold chain.

“It’s beautiful, Pols.” She gives the key a little tap with her finger. “I love it.”

Polly helps her put the necklace on, and they both stand looking at it in Betty’s mirror for a moment, before their mother calls “Girls! We’re going to be late for our reservation,” and they’re forced to run downstairs.

Her parents and Polly are all on their best behavior for the evening, and while there’s a part of Betty that’s more than a little peeved she didn’t get a say in any of her birthday plans (why she couldn’t at least have invited Archie and Kevin to come with them tonight, she’ll never understand), it’s a perfectly lovely dinner otherwise. The waiter brings out Betty’s favorite cake from her favorite bakery; she’s embarrassed when the whole restaurant sings, but feels a little bit special nevertheless. Her family seems happy to be together, and that’s really the best birthday present she could ask for. No one brings up Jason Blossom.

Betty decides to strike while the iron is at least moderately warm. While everyone is still under the influence of white cake and that amazing strawberry filling.

“Mom, Dad,” she starts. A little flare of nervousness shoots through her stomach, and she places both hands flat on the table, pressing lightly into her palms. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to bring up.”

Alice raises an eyebrow.

“It’s about this summer.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve been thinking—a lot, actually—about what I could do this summer. Something that would look really great on my college applications.”

Her mother nods. “We can start looking for suitable volunteer opportunities.”

“Actually…” Betty clears her throat, lifts her eyebrows, smiles; her mother immediately lets loose a _tsk_ , which Betty decides to ignore. “I was hoping for something more like…official work experience.”

“A job?” Alice’s right eyebrow, meet ceiling. “A job would look fine on your college applications. But you don’t need to work for money, Betty, and a volunteer position would speak more highly of your priorities.”

“Not a job,” Betty says quickly. “I was thinking more like an internship.”

“An internship,” muses Hal. “That sounds—” He’s interrupted by that powerful eyebrow of Alice’s, and changes tactics. “What kind of internship, Betty?”

“I found a few different ones already. Mostly in publishing.”

“There are no publishing companies in Riverdale,” says Alice, through pursed lips.

“I know.” Her hands have started slipping over the table’s edge, and she stares at the tips of her fingernails, which are longer than she’s been letting them get lately. “I’d have to—they would be out of town.”

Her father’s brow furrows. “If you want publishing experience, you can just work at the _Register_.” His brow is nowhere near as powerful as his wife’s, and everyone ignores him.

“Would you be gone for the whole summer?” asks Alice.

Betty nods. “But it’s not like I’d be on my own. The internships I’m most interested in, they have programs for high school students. They’re…structured. I wouldn’t just be running wild in New York City or something.”

Her parents do _not_ look impressed. Under the table, Polly reaches over and gives Betty a reassuring nudge on the thigh.

“You know the _Register_ wouldn’t carry the same weight on my applications. It might for someone else, but for me it’s just…I mean, you’re my parents. It might look like you hired me because I’m your daughter.”

“I see your point, Betty. But you’d be away from Riverdale for the whole summer. Alone.”

“Yes, Mom.” Betty squares her shoulders for this one, sits tall, tries to ignore the tingling in her palms. “I would.”

Alice doesn’t blink. “We’ll think about it,” she says, in a voice that Betty knows means _absolutely not_.

It all puts a bit of a sour note on her birthday party, though Betty’s at home and in her pajamas before the full injustice of the situation really strikes her. By this point she’s been mulling over not just the end of the birthday party, but what that birthday party was in the first place—which is to say, not really a party at all. Who is her mother to decide that fifteen is “too old” to have a real birthday party with her friends invited? _Polly_ had a fifteenth birthday party, with friends. Polly had a _sixteenth_ birthday party, also with friends.

Before she can change her mind, Betty’s at her computer, setting up an e-invite. _It’s not much of a party, I know_ , she writes, _but join me at Pop’s next Friday night for my birthday?_ She thinks a moment longer, and adds _No presents, just your presence :)_ before selecting a few email addresses from her contact list and hitting send.

* * * * *

His mom’s been driving him around more lately. Aside from the _why couldn’t you have offered to do this when it was snowing_ of it all, it’s pretty nice. They talk, sometimes.

That’s a lie.

They never talk; at least, they never talk about anything important. Jellybean talks, when she’s in the car, but sometimes she’s not in the car. Gladys Jones, well, Jughead doesn’t remember her ever being a terribly talkative person, but since she returned from Toledo she’s been even more withdrawn.

(Except for the arguments, of course. But there haven’t been many of those lately.)

(It occurs to him that this is because his parents almost never see each other anymore.)

Sometimes, to pass the time, Jughead writes dialogue in his head.

“Hey, Mom, guess what? The Serpents recruit guys my age. Did you know that? Do you think I should join them?”

“Hey, Mom. Did you know Dad showed me our old home movies from when I was five? What’s the deal with everything being kind of okay back then? What happened?”

“Hey, Mom. What made you decide Dad was a good idea in the first place? Was it the motorcycle?”

“Hey, Mom. If you didn’t need me to babysit sometimes, would you care if I died in a fire?”

“Hey, Mom. Is this—” He gestures to the space between them. “What is this, anyway? Do I just, like, remind you of Dad too much?”

But he’s still afraid to know the answers. He’s afraid to _imagine_ the answers. So the questions remain unasked and he remains none the wiser.

Whoever said ignorance was bliss was a fucking liar, though.

* * * * *

The first person to show up the next Friday, even before her own sister gets there, is Jughead Jones.

Betty’s arrived a few minutes early, and she’s watching Pop Tate make her a special birthday milkshake. Just as he reaches for the sprinkles, the diner door opens and in walks Jughead, looking uncharacteristically nervous, like he’s afraid he’s come to the wrong place.

She waves from her table in the back, and he nods and heads over.

“Hi!” Betty says, standing up to give him the biggest hug she thinks she can get away with. She fully expects him to resist it, but it’s her birthday and she’s giving everyone hugs, darn it, even Jughead. “I didn’t think you would…”

And then she trails off, distracted, because Jughead is unexpectedly hugging her back.

“You didn’t think I was coming?” They come to the natural end of the hug, and now Jughead’s taking a step back, raising an eyebrow at her. Betty shakes her head. Why this is flustering her, she has no idea. Possibly because—email RSVP aside—she really didn’t think he was going to come. She certainly didn’t think he was going to accept physical contact.

“No, I…” She swallows once, letting her face settle naturally into a smile. “It’s early, that’s all. I didn’t think you’d be here so soon.”

“I’m not late for _everything_ ,” he says, and Betty suddenly realizes that she’s only ever seen Jughead late when he arrives with Archie. “Anyway—”

They’re interrupted by the arrival of Betty’s milkshake. Jughead orders one for himself, and they slide into opposite sides of the booth.

“So, Cooper.” Jughead leans into the corner of the bench seat, angling himself, both arms on the back of the bench. _Insouciant_ , supplies the PSAT dictionary in Betty’s head (she’s been studying). “What made you choose this fine establishment for the evening’s festivities? It’s pretty far off our usual beaten path.”

“Oh, ha, ha,” Betty replies. Jughead raises an eyebrow at her, and she shrugs. “I mean, I would probably have just invited people to my house, if my parents hadn’t decided I’m supposed to be a complete recluse and social pariah.”

“Well, we can’t have that.” He cracks the tiniest of smirks. “Complete recluse and social pariah is my role, and I don’t want to have to fight you to the death for it.”

Betty folds her arms on the worn linoleum tabletop and leans forward slightly, pressing on her elbows as she draws Jughead into eye contact. For a moment, she’s close—so close—to asking him _why_ , why he does this, why he insists on resigning himself to the margins when he could so easily be in the center. But she can’t quite formulate it into a sentence that doesn’t sound judgmental. Then she realizes she’s hardly one to ask such a question anyway, seeing as she’s so popular that she thought of exactly four friends to invite to her own birthday party, one of whom is her own sister. By the time she’s had both those thoughts, the prolonged intense staring into each other’s eyes thing is starting to feel weird.

Jughead’s tiny smirk disappears. He breaks eye contact, and Betty feels a small wave of relief wash over her. 

“So,” he says, ducking down to reach under the table, where he’s stashed his bag.

“So.”

Jughead sits up fully, and places a small wrapped package on the table. “Happy birthday.” 

For some reason, this causes Betty’s face to feel warm. Actually, no. Not just her face. Most of her body.

“Jughead, I said no presents.”

He shrugs. “I know.”

“Well, that looks like a present.”

“Well, yeah, Betty, it is,” he says, nodding a little. He pushes the book—the gift is very obviously a book—over to her. “Social pariah I may be, but I do understand how birthdays generally work. Nobody actually means it when they say they don’t want presents.” He reverts to his previous position, draped across the back of the booth. “Besides, I didn’t get you anything for Christmas.”

Jughead cocks his eyebrow at her, then at the book, and Betty sighs and slides her index finger under the wrapping paper.

“That doesn’t mean you owe me a birthday…oh, very funny.” The paper has fallen back to reveal a lightly stained 1970s edition of something called _Betty Crocker’s Cooky Book_. Betty rolls her eyes at Jughead as hard as she can, though she’s also fighting back a laugh.

The little smirk reemerges at the corner of Jughead’s mouth, where it plays momentarily before the door opens with a tinkle and Archie, Kevin, and Polly pile in all at once.

“I’ll get a chair,” Betty says, after she’s jumped up and hugged everyone, but Polly waves her off.

“We can all fit in one booth.”

“Yes,” says Kevin, nodding ferociously. “Betty, you’re the birthday girl, you sit in the middle.” He pops in next to Jughead before anyone else can react, and Betty spends the next ninety minutes pressed between her sister and Archie Andrews.

It’s not such a bad way to spend a birthday.

Around nine-thirty, Jason Blossom arrives. Although Betty didn’t specifically invite him, she realizes now that a part of her is surprised he didn’t show up sooner. It isn’t really a big deal, except that it somehow effectively breaks up the party.

“Jason’s paying for everyone, as a birthday present,” Polly announces, from her new position—draped around Jason’s neck. She looks thrilled about it; Kevin and Archie immediately offer their thanks, and Jughead is suddenly scowling at a pool of ketchup with both hands stuffed in his pockets. Jason merely nods and hands Polly a few bills, which Polly runs up to the register.

Betty stands up. “Thanks, Jason. You didn’t have to do that. That’s really nice.” Since it’s her birthday and she’s hugging everyone, she hugs Jason too.

“Cheryl’s waiting in the car,” Polly says, coming back over, “so we’re gonna split. See you at home, Betty, okay?”

“Okay,” Betty replies. For a moment, she contemplates asking what tonight’s cover story is supposed to be in case their parents ask. But then Jason’s arm is around Polly’s waist and he’s sweeping her away, and Betty thinks maybe she’d prefer to give a completely honest answer of _I don’t know_.

She says her goodbyes to Kevin and Jughead and then walks home with Archie, side by side but not arm in arm. It’s a nice April night—not cold, but cool enough that Betty can feel warmth radiating from Archie’s body. She finds the North Star, and makes a birthday wish: _Please_ , she thinks, _please give me a signal that I can get closer to that warmth_.

Of course, her birthday was actually three days ago, so this is almost certainly not going to work.

“Sorry things got weird with Jug and Jason Blossom back there,” Archie says.

She’s kind of surprised Archie noticed. “Yeah, what was that?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, really. Nothing’s happened for a while. At least, nothing I know about.” Archie pauses in his tracks for a moment, rubs a hand along the back of his neck. “Don’t tell Jughead I said anything, okay?”

“You really didn’t,” Betty points out, turning to face him. “What do you mean, ‘nothing’s happened for a while’?”

“Oh, just…” A sigh escapes him, and they both start walking again. “You know. Jug gets picked on sometimes.”

“What do you mean, ‘picked on sometimes’?” She knows exactly what he means. “Archie, are you telling me—”

“It’s not, like, an active bullying problem,” Archie says, a note of defensiveness in his voice. “And I don’t think Jason _personally_ has done anything in a long time. But, you know.” He shrugs, and sighs again. “Jug’s an easy target sometimes, still.”

“Oh, my god, Archie.”

“Betty, it’s not…” He sighs again. “Look, I’m sure Jason’s gotten over doing…stuff. And I’d never let anything happen to Jughead, you know that. Just—please, Betts, don’t tell him I said anything. He hates that I even know.”

They’ve stopped walking again. Betty looks into her best friend’s eyes and sees they’re full of sincerity and concern and—love, even.

 _Have you ever considered that you’re not always around to protect him?_ rises up inside her, where it gets impossibly tangled with _Do you look like that when you talk about **me**?_ and remains, knotted, somewhere in the back of her throat.

They walk in silence for a few blocks. In fact, they’re almost home before Archie clears his throat. “How’s the internship thing going with your parents?”

“Okay, I guess. I’m applying for a few, at least. They can’t stop me from doing that.”

“Will they let you go if you get one?”

Betty shakes her head. “I have no idea.”

“I know you’ll get one,” he says. “Whichever one you want. You’ll get it.”

She looks into her best friend’s eyes again and sees only sincerity.

They’re almost at Archie’s front lawn when he stops again, and gently touches her arm.

“Hey, Betty?”

“Yeah?”

She waits, blood rushing in her ears, palms tingling in anticipation.

“I know you said no presents, but…” He reaches to the inside pocket of his jacket, and pulls out a small, neatly wrapped package that is very obviously a book. “Happy birthday.”

A quiet smile spreads across her face. “Thank you.” He’s clearly waiting for her to open it, so she slides her finger under the tape, noting as she does that she’s seen this wrapping paper already tonight.

Inside is a first edition of _The Bluest Eye_.

“Archie,” she says softly, feeling a tear well up. She blinks it away before she trusts herself to look up at Archie; when she does, he’s smiling hopefully at her.

“You don’t have that, right?”

“No.”

His smile broadens, and hers does too, and then they’re grinning idiotically at each other until Betty runs in for a hug.

“Thanks, Archie. I love it.”

“Happy birthday, Betts.”

If there were ever to be a _more_ …but no. Not tonight. She’s got his arms around her shoulders and the most thoughtful gift he’s ever given her in one hand; she’s got his scent in her nostrils (soap, grass, a hint of French fry grease) and her face pressed into his chest; she’s got his body heat penetrating her sweater; but that, apparently, is all she’s going to get.

For tonight.

For tonight, she thinks, it’s enough.

“Betty, you know, I don’t think you should be spending time with that Archibald Andrews,” follows her up the stairs.

But tonight, Betty has enough to respond with a simple “Good night, Mom.”

* * * * *

Jughead’s still half a mile from home when his phone buzzes.

 _Good call on the book, man_ , and two thumbs up.

He’s stopped cringing at the appendage of “man.” Resisting it just seems futile at this point. Resisting an “I told you so” is a hell of a lot harder, and Jughead can’t help but imagine what kind of scenario might have unfolded if he’d followed his first instinct and made the good call on his own behalf.

 _Cool beans_ , he types instead.

He’s just about succeeded in getting about twenty-five alternate scenarios folded up and put far, far away when his phone buzzes again, which is to say, his phone buzzes again at ten o’clock the following morning. This time it lights up with a picture: the top half of Betty’s face, one skeptical eyebrow raised, her nose peeking over the top of the cookbook, which she holds open to the inside title page.

 _Ah_ , he writes, _you found my dedication_.

(“Happy birthday to my second favorite Betty,” he’s written, after a long hard think about the whole situation.)

_I’m not sure if I should be mad at you or not, Jughead. There’s a fictional Betty you like more than me?_

Jughead’s not sure if he should be mad at Jughead or not, either. But Betty greets him on Monday morning with a devilish look in her eye and a little decorative tin of…

“What _are_ those?” Kevin pokes at one of the cookies—Jughead’s pretty sure they’re cookies—with a vaguely horrified look on his face.

“Wheaties Cherry Blinks,” says Betty.

“Wheaties what now?”

“It’s basically a sugar cookie. But it’s full of nuts and raisins and covered in Wheaties, and there’s a maraschino cherry on top.”

Kevin actually turns pale at this listing of ingredients, and steps away. Archie mutters something about hating raisins.

Betty takes a step closer to Jughead and holds the tin out, so he takes a cookie. For science. And also for breakfast, since Jellybean ate the last Pop Tart this morning and lunch is a long, long way away. 

“It’s not the _worst_ thing I’ve ever eaten.”

“Coming from you,” says Kevin, “that means they’re inedible.”

Betty grins and presses the tin into Jughead’s hands.

“Wait until I make you the Cheerios Molasses Patties,” she says, a little twinkle in her eye keeping her just this side of completely earnest. “Those have _vinegar_.”

* * * * *

Her acceptance letter comes two weeks after her birthday, and Betty’s so excited she literally squeals into the envelope before rushing over to bang Archie’s front door down. Polly’s been caught sneaking in after two in the morning twice more and Betty’s got eight bright red crescents in her palms, but she’s also got this, _this_ , in her palm. Her summer, right here in the palm of her hand.

“Betts?”

“I got it.” She holds up the letter. “The one I wanted.”

She also gets the look of delight from Archie she wanted, and the hug she wanted, and the “I’m so proud of you, I knew you’d get it” she wanted.

(And nothing else, for now. But that’s okay. What she has is enough for now.)

Her parents don’t blink when she shows them the letter. They are sitting in the sitting room, and the sitting room is not the place for displays of either positive or negative emotion, because its windows face the street.

“We’ll think about it,” Alice says, in a voice that Betty is only about half sure means _absolutely not_.

Polly, halfway down the stairs, catches this. “Think about what?”

* * * * *

His acceptance letter comes two weeks after Betty’s birthday, and the feeling of having succeeded at something like this is so completely disconcerting that he stuffs the letter back in its envelope, hides it in his pillowcase, and says nothing to anyone, not even Archie or Betty or his English teacher.

In the end, Jughead knows, nothing will come from this. He collects the Twilight Drive-In projection booth key from the mayor’s office and gets so caught up in cleaning the projector one Friday night that he just sleeps there.

He sleeps surprisingly well there.

Neither of his parents notices that he’s gone. Or if they do, they don’t say anything about it. He walks back in the house on Saturday morning to find everything exactly as he left it the previous afternoon.

He throws half a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter in his bag and disappears for another night.

The first (and only) thing his mother says to him on Sunday morning is “Did you eat all the peanut butter?” Jughead doesn’t answer; he just showers and puts on clean clothes and heads right back out the door to the Twilight. For once the walk doesn’t clear his mind, doesn’t even come close. In fact, it’s worse; his whole body is laced through with something white-hot, something sticky and pulsating that he has to get _out_.

When he comes back to himself, he’s sweaty and there’s a fresh tear in his t-shirt and a bunch of junk piled up against a back wall of one of the drive-in’s many shabby outposts is, well, even junkier. His palms feel raw from gripping bare wood. His shoulders ache. For the first time, he thinks, he understands the appeal of Archie’s punching bag.

Speaking of which: _Wanna hang this afternoon?_ arrived at some point during his whiteout, and only the desire for food that isn’t a peanut butter sandwich makes him agree to lunch at Pop’s and an afternoon of listening to Archie tinker with his guitar.

“You okay?” Archie asks, after thirty minutes without conversation.

“Yeah,” Jughead mutters.

“Are you sure?”

He’s been staring at the ceiling for half an hour while he scratches Vegas’s shoulders and he’s still absolutely drained.

“I’m fine, Arch.”

“Okay,” Archie says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

* * * * *

Two weeks before school lets out, Alice Cooper knocks on Betty’s bedroom door.

“Your father and I are so proud of you for earning such a prestigious summer internship,” she says. “Of course you can go.”

“Oh my gosh. Mom, thank you.”

They hug, and Betty can’t remember the last time she felt so much warmth from her mother.

“We’ll miss you terribly, Betty.”

“I’ll miss you too.”

She means it, she does. But she’s already envisioning herself at work: chasing down stray apostrophes, being passed canapes at fancy book readings, discussing the latest possible Next Great American Novel, the one that arrived unsolicited just this morning and which she, Betty Cooper, happened to discover in the inbox. She has to admit the fantasy is a bit Emily Blunt in _The Devil Wears Prada_ , except with books and (with any luck) a nicer boss.

Then she remembers she’ll be living in a college dorm room and working at a small independent publisher, not a giant fashion magazine, and tries to temper her expectations a little bit.

* * * * *

One week before school lets out, Gladys Jones knocks on Jughead’s bedroom door. She sits in his desk chair and there’s a look in her eyes that he’s never, ever seen before.

“We need to talk,” she says.

“I’m not failing any classes, if that’s what you’re wondering.” He knows, somehow, that it isn’t, and not just because his mother has never taken much of an interest in his grades.

When she’s done talking, Jughead leans back against his bedroom wall and pulls his beanie over his eyes, wishing that the world hadn’t gone ahead and crumbled after all.

“Jughead.”

He’s waiting for her to leave, waiting for her to _leave him alone_ , and for once in his life she doesn’t do it. Perhaps it’s that particular irony that finally incites him. Whether he’s filled with courage or a blinding, raging stupidity in that moment, he’ll never know, because as soon as he’s capable of thinking about this situation he won’t be brave enough to do it.

He rips the beanie off his head and wrings it tightly in both hands. There’s a single hot tear desperately trying to escape his left eye and he wills it not to fall.

“What _is_ this?” he asks, glancing back and forth between them. Their relationship. “What did I _do_? Do I just—do I remind you too much of Dad, or something?”

“You did nothing.”

(If he were ever brave enough to revisit this moment in his life, he would note that here, his mother moved to the bed, across from him, and looked him straight in the eye.)

“You are _nothing_ like your father. Not in the ways that matter.”

(If he were ever brave enough to revisit this moment in his life, he would note that here, his mother lost her own battle against tears.)

“You’re not like me, either.” She takes a deep breath. “You never have been. And that’s a good thing.”

(If he were ever brave enough to revisit this moment in his life, he would note that here, he seriously considered yelling that the problem he was currently having was not an identity crisis.)

“Jughead, don’t make this harder on me than it already is.”

“Harder on _you_?” He moves his gaze to the ceiling, and keeps it there.

“I’m sorry.” She takes another breath; this one’s shaky, but resolved. “This isn’t permanent. We will put things back together. We will miss you every single day.”

“ _Will_ you?”

“Of course.”

Jughead knows she’s trying to make eye contact with him now, but he can’t look at her, he just can’t. He stares at his hands instead.

“Jughead, I love you. I’m your mother, and I will always love you.”

There’s a pause, into which he refrains from inserting another “Will you?” 

“But I have to do this now. I _have_ to do this. I need a break. Your sister…”

“But I don’t.”

(If he were ever brave enough to revisit this moment in his life, he would tease out the approximately seventeen million questions he could have asked here, the three most important being 1. “Are you leaving me here because you don’t think I need a break?” 2. “Are you leaving me here because you think Dad needs me?” and 2a. “And don’t you think that’s a kind of an unfair burden to put on me?” and 3. “Are you leaving me here because you think I’m beyond redemption?”)

(When it actually happens, he can’t formulate any of that into even part of a cogent thought.)

“It’ll only be the summer, okay?”

She hugs him, and it feels like being hugged by something slimy and awful from a fairy tale.

He thinks about going to sleep at the Twilight again, but instead he sneaks into Jellybean’s room and doesn’t sleep at all.

* * * * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, [those cookies are real](http://imgur.com/a/xBOCn).
> 
> This fic is now splitting into canon-compliant and canon-divergent versions. The canon-compliant version will be updated here, in this work. The canon-divergent version is underway, and continues in[all the roads we have to walk](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11427165/chapters/25602732).


End file.
